Rosarita by Anita Desai New Paperback ARC Release date 1/7/2025

Description: From “world-class writer” (The Washington Post) and three-time Booker finalist Anita Desai, an exquisitely written stunning exploration of love, place, memory, history, and the secrets between a mother and her daughter.Away from her home in India to study Spanish, Bonita sits on a bench in El Jardin de San Miguel, Mexico, basking in the park’s lush beauty, when she slowly becomes aware that she is being watched. An elderly woman approaches her, claiming that she knew Bonita’s mother—that they had been friends when Bonita’s mother had lived in Mexico as a talented young artist. Bonita tells the stranger that she must be mistaken; her mother was not a painter and had never travelled to Mexico. Though the stranger leaves, Bonita cannot shake the feeling that she is being followed.Days later, haunted by the encounter, Bonita seeks out the woman, whom she calls The Trickster, and follows her on a tour of what may, or may not, have been her mother’s past. As a series of mysterious events brilliantly unfold, Bonita is unable to escape The Trickster’s presence, as she is forced to confront questions of truth and identity, and specters of familial and national violence.A masterpiece of storytelling from a gifted writer, Rosarita is a profound mediation on mothers and marriage, art and self-expression, and how the traumas from the past can impact future generations. Praise for Rosarita“Evocative… subtle and enigmatic... Desai revels in equivocation and possibility, embracing the ambiguity of memory itself to tell a shimmering, sometimes fevered tale in which a mother and daughter are pulled apart and fused together. In Rosarita, the known rubs up against the unknown, and a kaleidoscopic network of possible lives are lost and found in barely 100 pages.” —Financial Times (UK)“A novel about storytelling, history and belonging. It is about the desire to know one’s forebears, and therefore gain a greater insight into oneself…a beautiful rejoinder to the glib and common-place phrase one hears far too much today: it is what it is…There is a dreamy and wistful mood to this very short gem, lulling in its revelations and comforting in its gentle appeal. A wonder of a novel.”—Irish Independent“Rosarita is not the Desai of Clear Light of Day (1980) or Fasting, Feasting (1999), those great, studiously realist and Booker shortlisted novels of Indian family life. This is a much more ludic tale, as taut and weird and entrancing as a story by Jorge Luis Borges. If it is to be her swansong – Desai is 87 years old – then it’s a magnificent way to go out.”—The Telegraph (UK)“Poignant…intense and unsettling …Rosarita is a thoughtful read that will delight Desai stalwarts and send newcomers scurrying to her impressive backlist; leaving all hopeful that this won’t be her last piece of short fiction.”—The iPraise for Anita Desai“Anita Desai is a magnificent writer.” —Salman Rushdie“If you've never read anything by Anita Desai, you're out of excuses. One of India's most celebrated writers, she's been publishing for almost 50 years and come close to winning the Booker Prize three times…a world-class writer… Desai takes a certain perverse pleasure in exposing the self-pity of mediocre people; if Anita Brookner were a little meaner, she might write like this.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post“Whether in India, Mexico or America, Desai’s characters tend to be easy marks for new possibilities — for something, anything, other than life as it is…For a writer so taken with such arrangements, the best results are minor-key masterpieces… At her finest, Desai is a brilliant anatomist of people.” —New York Times Times on The Artist of Disappearance“Through the deceptively simple juxtaposition of opposites and the interweaving and repetition of themes in these two narratives, Desai builds a complex and elegant fiction.” —Boston Globe“Desai is more than smart; she's an undeniable genius.” —Carolyn See, Washington Post“Anita Desai is considered one of the foremost Indian authors writing in English. Her novels convey the tangled complexities of Indian tradition, with an economy of language that is clean, simple and elegantly straightforward.” —Denver Post“The peerless chronicler . . . [of] a world which is already disappearing.” —Independent (U.K.)“To compare Anita Desai's fiction with that of Chekhov or the short stories of Tolstoy is not extravagant; it is entirely warranted.” —Irish Times“One of the most accomplished novelists writing today.” —Fay Weldon“Desai's characters are wonderfully, fallibly human.” —San Francisco Chronicle“Anita Desai is a wonderfully subtle writer who achieves her powerful and poignant effects by stealth rather than direct action.” —Salon“Anita Desai is one of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture.” —Alison Lurie“A superb observer of the human race, achieving coloratura runs where most writers would have managed only a gasp or a gape. Like all serious novelists she puts her best energy into fingering the texture of someone's life, getting a few solid answers to the incessant question ''What is it like to be them?'' She reminds us of how tractable real-life people are, at least when compared with characters in fiction. She reminds us of how much guessing we have to do in order to stay in touch.” —New York Times on Baumgartner’s Bombay“Desai writes powerfully and provocatively about family and tradition, men and women, marriage and motherhood…there’s a gothic sense of mystery and suspense…Thrice shortlisted for the Booker prize, she is known for the effortless lyricism of her sentences, the deceptive simplicity of her stories, and her canny eye for detail…not many people expected new fiction from the 87-year-old. But Rosarita, I am pleased to say, is a transcendent late gift: both a testament to Desai’s enduring genius as a writer and a wholly remarkable vindication of literature’s power to illuminate the conundrums of human experience. This is a novel of profound philosophical inquiry, pondering the enigmas of the mind and the self, the frontiers of fantasy and reality, and ultimately, whether one person can ever fully imagine and understand the life of another.”—The Guardian (UK)About the AuthorAnita Desai is a renowned author born and educated in India. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times for her novels Clear Light of Day, In Custody, and Fasting, Feasting. She is the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in New York.

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End Time: 2024-11-11T15:50:08.000Z

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