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Clear Light of Day

Clear Light of Day

Written by Anita Desai

Shortlisted
The Booker Prize 1980
Published by Heinemann

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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.

Anita Desai

Anita Desai

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

Anita Desai and Deborah Levy in conversation

Anita Desai discusses her body of work at the Sydney Writers’ Festival in 2013, with author Deborah Levy.

Other nominated books by Anita Desai

Fasting, Feasting
Anita Desai’s intricate family drama examines the different ways in which two cultures assuage human hungers, desires and appetites
In Custody
A frustrated small-town scholar lands the opportunity of a lifetime, but only encounters more frustration in Anita Desai’s touching comic novel