The Artist of Disappearance, Anita Desai
The Artist of Disappearance, Anita Desai
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The Artist of Disappearance

Author: Anita Desai

Narrator: Anne Flosnik and James Langton

Unabridged: 4 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/20/2011

Synopsis

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Anita Desai ruminates on art and memory, illusion and disillusion, and the sharp divide between life's expectations and its realities in three perfectly etched novellas. Set in India in the not-too-distant past, the dramas illuminate the ways in which Indian culture can nourish or suffocate. All are served up with Desai's characteristic perspicuity, subtle humor, and sensitive writing. Overwhelmed by their own lack of purpose, the men and women who populate these tales set out on unexpected journeys that present them with a fresh sense of hope and opportunity. Like flies in a spider's web, however, they cannot escape their surroundings - as none of us can. An impeccable craftsman, Desai elegantly reveals our human frailties and the power of place.

About Anita Desai

Anita Desai is a renowned author born and educated in India. She 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 the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Atri on October 20, 2021

Desai deftly evokes the recalcitrance of nostalgic reveries, the introspective tint of memories, and the transformative gaze of the artist that seeks patterns within nature and finds sublimity enmeshed in the recesses of ephemeral emotions.......more

Goodreads review by Jill on November 06, 2011

The three novellas that comprise Anita Desai’s newest collection all focus on the shutting of the windows of opportunity. In Anita Desai’s own words: “We are all in this together, this world of loss and defeat. All of us, every one of us, has had a moment when a window opened, when we caught a glimp......more

Goodreads review by Inderjit on September 02, 2017

Anita Desai’s triptych of stories in ‘The Artist of Dissapearance’ depict of lives three different characters, an aged civil servant reminiscing about a youthful adventure, a spinsterish lecturer of English Literature and a recluse who haunts his family’s burned family home-all of these characters a......more

Goodreads review by Shaz on October 29, 2012

This is the first book I have read by Anita Desai, an author who has been on my to-read list and ashamedly unread for far too long. I am glad that I picked this book because it’s an interesting example of Desai’s masterful lyrical prose without the heaviness of philosophical musings. “The Artist of......more

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