DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Artist of Disappearance

Anita Desai author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:2nd Aug '12

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Artist of Disappearance cover

A jewel of a book from India's finest living woman writer.

A government official who is inspecting a faded mansion of forgotten treasures, comes across the final, shocking gift which is bleeding the museum dry.

A triptych of beautifully crafted novellas make up Anita Desai's exquisite new book. Set in modern India, but where history still casts a long shadow, the stories 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.

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

Profoundly elegiac -- Margaret Drabble * New Statesman *
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 *
Elegantly paced and smartly crafted -- Fatima Bhutto * Financial Times *
Anita Desai writes exquisitely -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
Bewitchingly beautiful * The Times *

ISBN: 9780099553953

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 12mm

Weight: 128g

176 pages