Anita Desai stands out as one of the best of the numerous Indian novelists who chose to write in English.
Clear Light of Day, her seventh novel and one of the finest, first published in 1980, is widely taught in universities across the world, and has received considerable critical attention.
In Clear Light of Day there is very little “plot”, and useful references in terms of genre would be to Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner or Marcel Proust, as Desai explores the effects of history on individual characters, the interaction between past and present, and the workings of memory. Readers who enjoy “action” find the pace of Desai’s novels too slow: nothing much happens, and only the inner selves and vision of life of the characters matter. As Anita Desai explained in an interview
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Citation: Pesso-Miquel, Catherine. "Clear Light of Day". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 July 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5969, accessed 25 November 2024.]
