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  • Published: 3 August 2001
  • ISBN: 9780099428497
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99

In Custody




‘A remarkable piece of work… A magnificent novel’ Salman Rushdie, Observer

Touching and wonderfully funny, In Custody is woven around the yearnings and calamities of a small-town scholar in the north of India. An impoverished college lecturer, Deven, sees a way to escape from the meanness of his daily life when he is asked to interview India's greatest Urdu poet, Nur - a project that can only end in disaster.

  • Published: 3 August 2001
  • ISBN: 9780099428497
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99

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.

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Praise for In Custody

A major attempt to tackle serious themes... extraordinarily rich in incident and detail.

Sebastian Faulks

Anita Desai's most subtle and mature work to date... She retains an unforced and powerful ease in conveying the colour and sounds and sensations of Indian life.

Times Literary Supplement

A wry, gently humorous novel, full of wisdom and restraint... The author chronicles India lovingly but it would be a mistake to think of her simply as an Indian writer, for her themes are universal

Financial Times