"Fire on the Mountain" is a slight tale very much in the style of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala…. Set in Kasauli, a Himalyan resort of some former grandeur and much present squalor, it gives a bleak but convincing picture of modern India; the dust and blazing sun, the pseudo-English declining gentry, the sullen and starving poor….

[The] aged Nanda Kaul seeks a haven from her troubled land and from her troublesome family, but her privacy is shattered by the arrival of her granddaughter, Raka. Raka is a strange, half-mad child, as aloof as Nanda, and Nanda finds herself trying to draw the girl toward her with fantasies of a glamorous past. Raka, however, prefers to spend her days roaming the hillsides and setting fires. As the contest of wills intensifies, Nanda enlists the aid of her friend Ila Das, a fierce old woman….

Anita Desai's ability to evoke Nanda's...