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  • Published: 20 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9781448104543
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

Diamond Dust & Other Stories




Whole lives come into focus in this rich and diverse collection, as Desai trains her luminous spotlight on private universes from India to Canada and New England, from Cornwall to Mexico. Her protagonists set out on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or surprisingly back where they started from. Caught up in cycles of hope and disappointment, their lives are ruled by the seasons, or straitjacketed by the conventions of hospitality, friendship and family. In the title story, a beloved dog, black as Satan, brings nothing but disaster; in another, a business man away from home sees his own death; and elsewhere, old relationships stir up buried resentments, issues demand commitment - or escape. And in the final quiet masterpiece, one of Delhi's girls of slender means finds a kind of joy and freedom in a strange rooftop community.

  • Published: 20 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9781448104543
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

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 Diamond Dust & Other Stories

All her stories are full of a confidence in human nature that is a rarity and a pleasure to encounter.

The Spectator

Anita Desai is one of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture.

Alison Lurie

Contemporary Indian fiction writers are among the finest in the world, and Desai at her best, as she is throughout this collection, has deservedly won her place alongside them.

Irish Times

Exquisite...these stories sparkle with the fire of real diamonds.

The Times

Unsentimental, dazzling, funny and achingly sad.

Literary Review