Although she self-consciously shares many concerns with other Indian and women writers, those categories do scant justice to the careful consideration of the pressures of selfhood found in her novels.
The notion of place, and the movement toward or away from a specific place, is important in providing both a physical and spiritual context for her characters. Whether they are in the city or the countryside (a territorial opposition she often uses), the concrete particulars of a particular location, often a surprisingly diverse neighborhood in India, matter to Desai. Almost invariably, her characters travel physically as well as mentally and emotionally, either running away from home or on a quest for something. During these travels Desai uncovers some of the psychological "truth that is nine-tenths of the iceberg that lies submerged" by representing the inner and hidden life of her characters. Although she is not a political writer, the actions and psychic turmoil of the characters reflect the larger political turmoil in their worlds. Without turning the characters into mere ciphers, she is, as Anthony Thwaite pointed out in a review of In Custody (1984) in The New Republic (18 March 1985), "such a consummate artist that she suggests, beyond the confines of the plot and the machinations of her characters, the immensities that lie beyond them--the immensities of India."
Anita Mazumdar was born 24 June 1937 in Mussoorie, a hill station just north of Delhi, to a German mother, Toni Nime Mazumdar, and an Indian father, D.
