This anthology of critical essays examines the major aspects of Anita Desai’s fiction. The first two essays, both by the author under study, reflect on what the writing process means to her and why she writes in English, as well as recall some of the manifold facts of her itinerant life. The other 14 essays which include one interview, all by discerning scholars from across the globe, interrogate the defining features of Desai’s oeuvre: the range of her characters and locations imbued with multi-cultural and cross-cultural experiences, the situations of an unrelenting pull between her protagonist’s personal spaces and his/her familial or social milieu, the introverted fiction of emotional conflicts she writes about, and the question of women’s resistance to the constrictive spaces assigned to them by a patriarchal society. Incisive and illuminating, the insights in this volume on Desai’s writing career constitute a delightful and refreshing reading.
