Anita Desai was born to a Bengali father and German mother, and was educated in Delhi.  Her published work includes Fire on the Mountain for which she won the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the National Academy of Letters Award. Three of her books, Clear Light of Day, Fasting, Feasting and  In Custody were shortlisted for the Booker Prize and In Custody was also made into a classic  film by Merchant  Ivory. Her other well known books are Baumgartner’s Bombay and Journey to Ithaca.  She is the author of two books for children, The Peacock Garden and The Village by the Sea  She has written two collections of short stories, Games At Twilight and Diamond Dust

Anita Desai  is a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Assembly of Letters in Delhi and holds Fellowships at the Royal Society of Literature in London, the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York and Girton College, Cambridge.  She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts,  and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.