Anita Desai’s accomplished family drama explores how the unexplored crises of childhood can reveal new worlds - if courage can be found to face them.

To Tara, revisiting her childhood home in old Delhi, the dusty, shabby house and neglected garden seem only too familiar, her sister and brother quite unchanged. Yet the impression is superficial, for here is no dead end, and within the old and the known there are new discoveries to be made. Tara’s visit stirs many memories of a shared past.

Shortlisted
The Booker Prize 1980
Published by
Heinemann
Publication date
Anita Desai

Anita Desai

About the Author

Anita Desai has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times - 1980, 1984 and in 1999. She was born in Mussoorie, India and is the author of many novels and short stories.
More about Anita Desai

Though set in Old Delhi and centering in part on the Hindu/Moslem tensions of 1947 India, Desai's second novel is really a thoroughly universal tale of unhealable family hurts

Anita Desai and Deborah Levy in conversation

Other nominated books by Anita Desai

Fasting, Feasting
In Custody