Desai's Life and Works

Desai: Fire on the Mountain

In this course Dr Rachel Farebrother explores Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain. In the first lecture, we think about Desai’s life, career and early fiction up to the publication of Fire on the Mountain in 1977. After that, in the second lecture, we think about the gender politics of the novel, as well as of Indian culture and society more generally. In the third lecture, we think about the presentation of childhood in the novel, before turning in the fourth lecture to explore the contrast between Nanda Kaul’s (idealised) representation of the Kasauli landscape and Raka’s (non-idealised) version. In the fifth lecture, we think the importance of sound, speech and silence in the novel, with a particular focus on the speech and silencing of Ila Das.

Desai's Life and Works

In this lecture, we explore Anita Desai’s life and early fiction up to the publication of Fire on the Mountain in 1977. In particular, we focus on: (i) her early life in Mussoorie, India, her degree (English Literature at the University of Delhi), her marriage and her experience of motherhood; (ii) the breadth of her literary influences, including Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), R. K. Narayan (1906-2001), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941); (iii) some of the key preoccupations of Desai’s work, particularly the limitations of women’s lives in post-colonial India; (iv) Desai’s first novel – Cry, the Peacock (1963); (v) Desai’s fifth novel – Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975); and (vi) Desai’s seventh novel – Fire on the Mountain (1977), including: the use of fire and heat imagery; the use of free indirect discourse; the figures of Nanda Kaul, Raka and Ila Das; and the ending of the novel.