by Anita Desai · Penguin Books Ltd · tapa blanda · ISBN 9780140238136
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«In Custody» is the literary fiction novel by Anita Desai, published by Penguin Books Ltd in paperback (208 pages, in English).
Deven, a timid university lecturer, agrees to interview Nur Shahjahanabadi, the greatest living Urdu poet, in Delhi, to escape his monotonous life. The real encounter clashes with his ideal: the dissolute old man and his circle trap him in a new form of captivity. A comedy about disillusionment, the decline of Urdu culture, and unfulfilled dreams.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984; the novel was adapted into a movie by Merchant Ivory.
For readers of literary fiction interested in India, Urdu culture, and the contradictions between ideals and reality.
Anita Desai is an Indian novelist and the emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Literature. She won the Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include Cry, the Peacock, Voices in the City (1963), Fire on the Mountain (1977) and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight (1978). She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London. Since 2020 she has been a Companion of Literature.
