Anita Desai was born in 1937. Her father was Bengali and her mother German, and she 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 1978 National Academy of Letters Award, followed by a collection of short stories, Games At Twilight, Clear Light of Day  which was shortlisted for that year's Booker Prize for Fiction. Her work includes In Custody  which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was made into a film by Merchant Ivory, Baumgartner's Bombay  and Journey to Ithaca. Anita Desai is the author of two books for children, The Peacock Garden and The Village by the Sea, which won The Guardian Award for Children's Fiction and was subsequently made into a film. Her latest novel, Fasting, Feasting, was published by Chatto & Windus in 1999 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was followed in 2000 by a collection of short stories, Diamond Dust.

Bibliography

Fire on the Mountain (Vintage, 1977)

Games at Twilight (Vintage, 1978)

The Peacock Garden (Vintage, 1979)

Clear Light of Day (Vintage, 1980)

The Village by the Sea (Puffin, 1982)

In Custody (Vintage, 1984)

Baumgartner's Bombay (Vintage, 1988)

Journey to Ithaca (Vintage, 1995)

Fasting, Feasting (Vintage, 1999)

Diamond Dust (Vintage, 2000)