🎯 Where Should I Start?
ⓘ About Anita Desai
Anita Desai is a literary fiction award-winning Indian novelist and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in 1937, she is the daughter of a Bengali businessman, D.N. Mazumdar, and a German immigrant mother, Toni Nime. Her father met her immigrant mother while studying engineering in prewar Berlin. The two married when it was unusual for an Indian man to marry a European woman. After marriage, the parents migrated to New Delhi. Desai went to Queen Mary’s High School in Delhi and later graduated from the University of Delhi with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. A year later, she married the director of a computer software company, Ashvin Desai. The couple has since had four children, including an award-winning writer Kiran Desai.
All Book Series by Anita Desai
The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry
Single-title series · published 2000
? Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Anita Desai?
Anita Desai is a literary fiction award-winning Indian novelist and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in 1937, she is the daughter of a Bengali businessman, D.N. Mazumdar, and a German immigrant mother, Toni Nime.
Which Anita Desai series should I start with?
Anita Desai's books stand alone rather than forming a numbered series, so there is no reading order to follow. The natural first pick is Cry, the Peacock (1963).
How many books has Anita Desai written?
Anita Desai has 22 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1963 and 2024. They are filed under 4 categories rather than in numbered series — chiefly Standalone Novels, Collections and Non-Fiction.
In what order should Anita Desai's series be read?
No reading order is needed: none of the 22 books catalogued here do not form a numbered series, so any title can be picked up first. Within each category they are listed by publication year.
How are Anita Desai's books organised into series?
This guide splits Anita Desai's 22 books into categories rather than numbered series: Standalone Novels (14 books); Collections (6 books); Non-Fiction (1 book); Anthologies (1 book).