Anita Desai was born in 1937 in Mussoorie. Her mother Toni Nime was German immigrant and her father D.N. Mazumdar was a Bengali businessmen. Her real name was Anita Mazumdar. Ashvin Desai was the name of her husband. She had completed her graduation in English Literature with honours from the University of Delhi. She had started her carrier as a novelist with Cry, The Peacock which was followed by equally crafted novel Voices In The City. Her portrayal of female characters and the psyche of Indian middle class women was outstanding and also worked as a motivation for other women writers.

Notable points about Anita Desai:-

• Her first Novel was Cry, The Peacock (1963).
• In 1978, she received Sahitya Academy Award for the novel Fire on the Mountain.
• She was shortlisted thrice for the Booker Prize : Clear Light of Day (1980); In Custody (1984); Fasting, Feasting (1999), she did’t got any.
• She considers Clear Light of Day her most autobiographical work.
• Her novel In Custody was filmised by Merchant Ivory Productions with same name.
• Her works include, Cry, The Peacock (1963); Voices in the City (1965); Bye Bye Blackbird (1971); The Peacock Garden (1974); Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975); Fire on the Mountain (1977); Games at Twilight (1978); Clear Light of Day (1980); The Village by the Sea (1982); In Custody (1984); Fasting, Feasting (1999); The Zigzag Way (2004); The Artist of Disappearance (2011).
• The Artist of Disappearance (2011) is her last work.
• She was awarded with Padma Bhushan in 2014 for her contribution in literature.
• Some critics call her the Virginia Woolf of India.
• Her daughter Kiran Desai won Booker Award in 2006 for her first novel “The Inheritance of Loss”.
• Her novels use the Stream of Conciousness technique.