author portrait

Anita Desai

Anita Desai was born and educated in India. Her novels Fasting, Feasting, Clear Light of Day and In Custody, were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In Custody was filmed by Merchant Ivory Productions. Anita Desai is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. She lives in New York State, and spends time each year in India and the UK.

Around the World in 80 Books

On November 9, 2021, the Penguin Press will publish AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS: A Literary Journey. 

Inspired by Jules Verne’s hero Phileas Fogg, author David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University’s department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic’s restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prize–winners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan, and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways in which the world bleeds into literature.

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