This reading is presented in association
with Asia Society Texas.
ANITA DESAI, "grande dame"
of South Asian diaspora writers, short-listed for the Booker Prize three times,
is the critically-acclaimed author of 14 books, including The Clear Light of
Day, Diamond Dust, Fasting, Feasting, and her most recent The Zigzag
Way. The New Yorker calls Desai "one of the most gifted of contemporary Indian
writers." The New York Times says of her most recent novel, The Zigzag
Way, it is "not just a condensed course in 20th-century Mexican history but
a meditation on the futility of our efforts to outrun the past."
KIRAN
DESAI, at the age of 35, described by The New Yorker as "a lavish, sharp-eyed
fabulist," was awarded the 2006 Man Booker Prize for her second novel, The
Inheritance of Loss, making her the youngest woman to win the British Commonwealth's
highest literary honor. Pankaj Mishra in The New York Times writes, "Kiran
Desai's extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight,
just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism,
economic inequality, fundamentalism, and terrorist violence." Her other novel,
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, hailed by the Baltimore Sun as
"a festival of comic eccentricity" that "exudes charisma, poetry, and joy in language
and life," was published to unanimous acclaim in 22 countries.
