Logo

Contextualizing Anita Desai's pervasive humanism and modernist sensibility, duality refers to the phenomenon of existential dialectics. It relates to the problematics of existential dissonance vis-à-vis the realm of dualistic possibilities of choice. Such state of being causes ambiguities of existence. Despite the fact of such a dangling human predicament, one desires to negotiate the perilous existence to manifest human freedom in order to achieve existential authenticity. Hence, the present study explores selected fiction of Anita Desai to nurture a nuanced understanding of the mystery of living such a rubric of duality. Such polemics constitute the research space of the present book whereby three independent yet connected aspects of duality are taken up for analysis that include: a) Duality of the Self and the Other (Cry, the Peacock and Where Shall We Go This Summer?); b) Duality of Illusion and Reality (Clear Light of Day and In Custody); c) Duality of Hostland (Routes) and Homeland (Roots) (Bye-Bye Blackbird and Baumgartner's Bombay). Therefore, dualities constitute the grammar of Desai's fiction and thus she presents a subtle vision of human existence.