SOURCE: Brush, Pippa. “German, Jew, Foreigner: The Immigrant Experience in Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay.” Critical Survey 8, no. 3 (1996): 277-85.

In the following essay, Brush examines Desai's articulation of the largely neglected European emigrant to India in Baumgartner's Bombay, emphasizing the multiple marginalization of the protagonist's character.

In her essay, ‘Writing the Immigrant Self: Disguise and Damnation,’ Canadian critic Aritha van Herk identifies the various stories which are often told in the literature of immigrants: ‘There is first of all the overt story. Then there is the much more complex and multi-foliate covert story’ (van Herk, p. 177), which she also refers to as the ‘story under the story’ (van Herk, p. 175). The overt story of European immigration into India has been told many times, in numerous novels about the British presence in India, articulating what van Herk identifies as the ‘tempting illusion’ (van Herk, p. 178) of the overt story. What...