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  • Published: 20 August 2018
  • ISBN: 9781784873929
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $29.99

Clear Light of Day

A BBC Between the Covers Big Jubilee Read Pick




‘A rich Chekhovian novel by one of the most gifted of contemporary Indian writers’ New Yorker

To the family living in the shabby, dusty house in Delhi, Tara's visit brings a sharp reminder of life outside tradition. For Bim, coping endlessly with their problems, there is a renewal of the old jealousies for, unlike her sister, she has failed to escape. Looking at both the cruelty and the beauty of family life and the harshness of India's modern history, Clear Light of Day brilliantly evokes the painful process of confronting and healing old wounds.

  • Published: 20 August 2018
  • ISBN: 9781784873929
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Anita Desai

Born and educated in India, Anita Desai is the author of many novels and short stories, and 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 Letters and the Royal Society of Literature.

Also by Anita Desai

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Praise for Clear Light of Day

A rich Chekhovian novel by one of the most gifted of contemporary Indian writers

New Yorker

A wonderful novel about silence and music, about the partition of a family as well as a nation

New York Times Book Review

Anita Desai has created an entire little civilization here from a fistful of memories, from a patchwork of sickroom dreams and childhood games and fairy tales. Clear Light of Day does what only the very best novels can do; it totally submerges us. It also takes us so deeply into another world that we almost fear we won't be able to climb out again

Anne Tyler, New York Times