‘Desai creates unforgettable moments, both visual and emotional.’ Daily telegraph buried resentments, unexpected disappointments, new friendships, small acts of cruelty, journeys that take you back to where you started. With trade mark compassion and tender irony, Anita desai’s short stories give us familiar worlds made unfamiliar, to wonderful effect. An ageing couple is stranded in a stultifying Delhi summer by the visit of arogueish old oxford friend, who trades on his charm; an American woman turns to hippies living in the Indian hills, homesick for the farmlands of Vermont; a dog terrorizes the neighbourhood but is cherished by his stern master; a Delhi girl of slender means fiends a new kind of freedom with her young friends, in her barsati home; a peaceful game of hideand seek turns into a nightmare; a businessman sees his own death. For the first time ever,in one masterly volume, here are Anita desai’s collected stories – from her very first storyto her most recent one, published this year. ‘Exquisite… stories whose beauty is in the detail, and their knowledge of the humanpsyche. They sparkle, not with the brash glitter of rhinestones, but with the intenser, morecomplex fire of real diamonds.’ TheTtimes