'What I Love To Do Best'

“Ever since I could first write I have been doing so. When I was taught how to write and read at school, I made up my mind that this was what I love to do best and this was the world I was going to occupy.” – Anita Desai

Born in Mussoorie, India on this date in 1937, Desai was half-Indian, half-German by birth, raised in a Hindi/Bengali culture, and learned to read and write in English, which ultimately became her “literary” language.  The youngest of 4 kids, she was fluent in 5 languages, started writing at age 7, and had her first story published at age 9.  

After writing short stories and co-founding a publishing firm in the 1950s, Desai had the first of her 17 novels, Cry The Peacock, published in 1963.   Her 1984 novel The Village by the Sea won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize – a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.  Three of her other novels have been finalists for prestigious Booker Prize. 

Emerita Professor of Humanities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she also has taught writing at Mount Holyoke, Baruch and Smith Colleges in the U.S. and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain.   Her daughter Kiran Desai also is an award-wnning novelist and a winner of the Booker Prize.

After nearly 8 decades of writing, Desai said she still enjoys pursuing her chosen craft. “Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day,” she said. “Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.”

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