num_pages: 224
description: Anita Desai's new book, hailed as "unsparing, yet tender and funny,"* brilliantly confirms her place among today's foremost Indian writers. FASTING, FEASTING takes on Desai's greatest the intricate, delicate web of family conflict. It tells the moving story of Uma, the plain older daughter of an Indian family, tied to the household of her childhood and tending to her parents' every extravagant demand, and of her younger brother, Arun, across the world in Massachusetts, bewildered by his new life in college and the suburbs, where he lives with the Patton family. Published in Britain to rave reviews, FASTING, FEASTING is "rich in the sensuous atmosphere, elegiac pathos, and bleak comedy at which the author excels" (The Spectator). From the overpowering warmth of Indian culture to the cool center of the American family, it captures the physical -- and emotional -- fasting and feasting that define two distinct cultures. *(Times Literary Supplement)
language: English
title: 'Fasting, Feasting' [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2000] Anita Desai
titlecomplete: 'Fasting, Feasting' [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2000] Anita Desai
characters: Arun, MamaPapa, Aruna, Uma, Mira Masi
genres: Fiction, Family, Cultural, Indian Literature, Asia, India, Literature, Asian Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 4818
places: Massachusetts
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist
publisher: Vintage