Anita Desai is one of Indias foremost writers. A leading light in a preeminent line of Indian writers, she has been likened to E.M. Forster and Jane Austen, gaining a faithful and steady following - many of whom grew up reading or studying her. Anita Desai has authored sixteen works of fiction, among them Clear Light of Day, In Custody, and Fasting, Feasting - all three s Anita Desai is one of Indias foremost writers. A leading light in a preeminent line of Indian writers, she has been likened to E.M. Forster and Jane Austen, gaining a faithful and steady following - many of whom grew up reading or studying her. Anita Desai has authored sixteen works of fiction, among them Clear Light of Day, In Custody, and Fasting, Feasting - all three shortlisted for the Booker Prize - as well as Baumgartners Bombay. In Custody tells the now-famous story of Deven, a Hindi lecturer at Lala Ram Lal College, who is asked to interview Nur, India??s greatest Urdu poet, and finds instead a debauched old man who lives in the lanes behind Jama Masjid - a far cry from the idol of his youth. What will become of poor Deven as he attempts to record Nurs work for posterity? Both comic and deeply tragic, In Custody is Anita Desai at her very best. (Also a major motion picture, made by Merchant Ivory Productions, starring Shashi Kapoor and Om Puri) Clear Light of Day spans the post-independence years in Delhi from the 40s to the 80s through the eyes of two sisters, Tara and Bim. As their many family tensions come to a head - Bim has not spoken to their brother Raja for years and refuses to go to his daughters wedding, and Tara feels the persistent guilt of having, like the others, abandoned Bim - they recall the drama of Partition and communal riots. For here is both the tale of modern India and that of a familys struggle against disintegration. Clear Light of Day is vintage Anita Desai, a novel as wonderfully contemplative as a cup of afternoon tea. Set in Berlin, Venice, Calcutta - and of course Bombay - Baumgartner??s Bombay is the story of the twentieth century; Hugo Baumgartner is a firanghi wherever he goes - too dark for Hitler??s Germany, too fair for India - but finds a home in multitudinous Bombay. Then, one day at the Caf?? du Paris, one of his regular haunts, he encounters a surly young German of the new order - a drug-crazed hippie who will ch