SOURCE: An interview with Anita Desai, in World Literature Written in English, Vol. 30, No. 1, Spring, 1990, pp. 47-55.

Desai on Her Parents and Upbringing:

My mother met my father when he was a student in Germany. She married him there, and went to India in the late 1920's. She used to tell us stories about Germany, and she was such a marvelous storyteller that I felt as if her memories of Germany were my own.

We spoke German at home; it was the language in which I learned nursery rhymes and fairy tales. We spoke Hindi to all our friends and neighbors. I learned English when I went to school. It was the first language that I learned to read and write, so it became my literary language. Languages tend to proliferate around one in India, and one tends to pick up and use whatever is at hand and...