Anita Desai is one of the best known authors in the world and she has influenced generations of authors. Desai's novels and main characters were mostly based on situations or people in her life or what would usual happen in her surroundings. Growing up it India during World War II had a large impact on her life. Her books were written in a way that would almost make you think the stories were completely true. Her books and characters were similar to her and the stories of her life.
Desai was born as Anita Mazumadar in Musoorie, a northern India hill station near Dehra Dun on June 24 1937. Born to a Bengali business man father and a mother that was from Germany and was the Toni Nime. She grew up during World War II and was no stranger to discrimination which is reflected in her writing. She was multilingual and she speaks German at home, as well, as Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English at school and in the streets. Growing up she says she was surrounded by western culture which probably had tweaked her writing to get more popular in North America. She began to write English at the age of seven and her first book published at the age of nine. At the age of 21 she married a business man named Ashvin Desai and they raised four children together. She is currently a college teacher in Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
Anita never tried, or ever got her work published in India because no publisher in India would be interested in a fiction writer from India. She was first noticed in England and later in North America. She believes she was noticed in England because of her western style of writing and their interest in India. She once said "I can state definitely that I did not choose English in a deliberate and conscious act and I'd say perhaps it was a language that chose me and I started writing stories in English at the age of seven, and have been doing so for thirt
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