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Anita Desai (b. 1937) is a respected writer of postcolonial Indian Literature in English. She published her first novel Cry, the Peacock in 1963, and since then has authored numerous novels for adults and children as well as collections of short stories. She was nominated for the Booker Prize three times, although it was her daughter, the writer Kiran Desai, who won the Booker Prize for her second novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006). Many of Anita Desai’s novels focus on the struggles of women or other marginalized characters, and many take place in India. Born to a German mother and a Bengali father, Desai was raised in India and grew up speaking Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, German, and English—the language in which she writes. Because India was still under British colonial rule at the time of Desai’s childhood, it was compulsory for schoolchildren to study English throughout the country.
Clear Light of Day belongs to a category of Indian postcolonial literature called Partition Literature, exploring the effects of the separation of the Indian continent into the nations of India and Pakistan (see below). Other famous works in this category include Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956), Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India (originally published as Ice Candy Man, 1988), and perhaps most famously Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize winning Midnight’s Children (1981).
By Anita Desai
A Devoted Son
Anita Desai
Baumgartner's Bombay
Anita Desai
Fasting, Feasting
Anita Desai
Fire on the Mountain
Anita Desai
Games at Twilight
Anita Desai
In Custody
Anita Desai
The Artist of Disappearance
Anita Desai
The Village by the Sea
Anita Desai
The Zigzag Way
Anita Desai
Voices in the City
Anita Desai
Brothers & Sisters
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Colonialism & Postcolonialism
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Colonialism Unit
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Family
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Forgiveness
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Guilt
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Indian Literature
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Memory
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The Booker Prizes Awardees & Honorees
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Women's Studies
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