The Artist of Disappearance: Three Novellas - Softcover

Desai, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0547840128 ISBN 13: 9780547840123

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2012

Synopsis

Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction

"The excellent strength [the novellas] share is a gracefulness and dreamlike sonority, reminiscent of writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and W.G. Sebald, wherein strange evolutions of solitary lives are the rule, and readers are held by the stately, hypnotic dignity of the voice that tells them." - San Francisco Chronicle

Set in modern India, these three novellas move beyond the cities to places still haunted by the past, and to characters who are, each in their own way, masters of self-effacement. An unnamed government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of forgotten treasures where he discovers a surprise "relic." A translator blurs the line between writer and translator, and in so doing risks unraveling her desires and achievements. In the title novella, a hermit hidden away in the woods with a secret is discovered by a film crew, which compels him to withdraw even further until he magically disappears . . .

Rich and evocative, remarkable in their clarity and sensuous in their telling, these novellas remind us of the extraordinary yet delicate power of this pre-eminent writer.

"Desai, at her best, offers enchanting, subtle, and deeply observed portraits of layered characters trapped between worlds." - Daily Beast

"Lingers in the memory the same way these landscapes and people of India prove impossible to forget." - Boston Globe

About this title

Review:

"Bewitchingly beautiful" (The Times)

"To compare Anita Desai's fiction with that of Chekhov or the short stories of Tolstoy is not extravagant; it is entirely warranted... anyone looking for the rare frisson at the heart of consummate storytelling need look no farther" (Eileen Battersby Irish Times)

"From a web of connections, Desai spins stories of history and loss that move the reader not with epiphanies, but through the sheer beauty of her storytelling" (Time Out)

"A pleasure" (Keith Miller Telegraph)

"Anita Desai writes exquisitely." (The Scotsman)

Book Description:

An absolute jewel from one of Chatto's preeminent novelists: a triptych of stories from India's finest living woman writer

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0547840128
• ISBN 13: 9780547840123
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176