Anita Desai
Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar (born 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer, she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea.
Our mind is precisely occupied by thoughts the majority of the time. When thoughts could not find room in the brain, we tend to write, and thoughts become more effective when we pen them down. The methods of writing our thoughts can have different spectrums. Poetry, drama, prose, non-fiction, and media are the broad classification of literature. Among these, poetry, the narrative form of literature is archaic. Beowulf, the epic poem of German heroic legend consisting of 3182 alliterative lines with the printed edition dated back in 1815 is considered one of the oldest poetic works. Iliad and Odessey, are the narrative poems that are the most influential and highly regarded works of ancient literature. This epic creation was also the beginning of Classical Antiquity. Non-fiction and drama come under the broad concept of prose. Literature started its journey with the Sumerian civilization in 3200 BC. The modernization of literature happened in the late 19th century and early 20th century. We name this evolution literary modernism or modernist literature.
The unique characteristic of ancient literature is that it is always been a saturation or an accumulation of wide stories from different people. Like in the present period we have fiction workshops but back then collective opinions from people were the binding source for literature.
Literature can be a source of information or entertainment. The evolution of literature was an initiation of saving or restoring records. Literature can also be a depiction of the religion one belongs to which is why we have a different dimension to literature. The reason why cultures and religions have different literature evolution and not a literature of uniformity is because of the loss of texts over the decades. The loss was sometimes due to deliberate suppression or accident.
The literature evolved in the Indian subcontinent is referred to as Indian literature. The early literature which evolved in India was oratory. Rig Veda, Sanskrit literature evolved in the 15th to 12th century BC was oral literature. Sanskrit literature played a significant role in the evolution of the sacred philosophies of India. Oral or folk literature was sung or spoken by people. When we talk about Indian literature, some inevitable epic works can not be dismissed. The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavata-Puranas. These epic works laid a literature foundation for the latter epic literature that evolved. India is known for its diverse culture. 22 languages have been officially recognized in India. Each language has its own literature built and formats contributing to the rich, multilingual, and manifold of literary history.
The creation of literature is a process of passion and creativity in conjunction. The literature guru Ms. Anita Desai who grew up speaking German, Hindi, and English was exposed to different cultures and languages. She is the author of many renowned books. And in an interview, she talks about her unique style of writing. She said, ‘I’ve always written better under stress. That’s when I feel compelled to write and tie my views and thoughts with reasons.’
Back then there were only a few English writers and they were scattered all over the country, but currently, writers are everywhere, and it is not difficult to find a writer’s community to share the general thoughts of a writer.
We live in a world where knowledge, entertainment, luxury, love, and why not even literature are affluent and abundant. We are obliged to witness some of the great works of our ancestors. Regarding literature, some of the novels or books have made history and a few of the must-reads are:
English Literature:
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813 classic
- To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1960
- The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1847
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, 1823
- One Flew Over the cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, 1962
- 1984 by George Orwell, 1949
Indian-English Literature:
- K Narayanan – The Guide
- Arundhati Roy – God of Small Things
- Kiran Desai – The Inheritance of Loss
- Rabindranath Tagore – Gitanjali
- Anita Desai – In Custody
- The Great Indian Novel – Shashi Tharoor
- Kushwant Singh – Train to Pakistan
Enjoy the literature abundance the world has provided and start contributing to the literature world!