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The Artist of Disappearance: Three Novellas Kindle Edition
“The excellent strength [the novellas] share is a gracefulness and dreamlike sonority, reminiscent of writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and W.G. Sebald, wherein strange evolutions of solitary lives are the rule, and readers are held by the stately, hypnotic dignity of the voice that tells them.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Set in modern India, these three novellas 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. An unnamed government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of forgotten treasures where he discovers a surprise "relic." A translator blurs the line between writer and translator, and in so doing risks unraveling her desires and achievements. In the title novella, a hermit hidden away in the woods with a secret is discovered by a film crew, which compels him to withdraw even further until he magically disappears . . .
Rich and evocative, remarkable in their clarity and sensuous in their telling, these novellas remind us of the extraordinary yet delicate power of this pre-eminent writer.
“Desai, at her best, offers enchanting, subtle, and deeply observed portraits of layered characters trapped between worlds.” – Daily Beast
“Lingers in the memory the same way these landscapes and people of India prove impossible to forget.” – Boston Globe
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateDecember 6, 2011
- File size1420 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Starred Review. ""...ensnaring novellas of consummate artistry and profoundly disquieting perceptions...master storyteller...provocative and mysterious..."" - Booklist
""...poignant and wry...a deft exploration of the limits people place on themselves by trying to cling to the past."" - Kirkus Reviews
""This collection leaves an indelible impression of the conflicts and ambitions found in a region riddled with conflict."" - Publishers Weekly
Editors' Choice. ""Desai is a brilliant anatomist of men and women who seek and gain but fail to triumph."" - The New York Times
""A pleasurably irony reading about these lost landscapes of the Indian soul sketched so deftly by Anita Desai."" - NPR
Book of the Week. ""You'll find yourself whipping through pages...stopping only to drool over their descriptions, which is the real treasure of this book, sentences as wondrous as the wonders they bring to life."" - Life Lift, The Oprah blog
""...superb...deceptively subtle, slightly surreal and profoundly insightful fiction."" - The Washington Post
""Desai explores [India] with such heart in this collection. It's a minute, multifarious world, totally unlike any other."" - Los Angeles Times
""...beautiful...Desai's novellas are classic, entranced with the grace of slowly unspooling narrative...breathtaking portraits of contemporary India..."" - Boston Globe
""As shrewd as she is compassionate, Desai crafts little snow globes in which characters - trapped, magnified and exposed to unfriendly eyes - try to find ways to live within their limits."" - The Columbus Dispatch
""This collection represents an author at the height of her powers. The stories found in The Artist of Disappearance feel light but are possessed of a significant inner strength, the clean and vivid prose akin almost to the flow of a stream: calm and tranquil on the surface but frenzied underneath."" - Irish Examiner (UK)
""...sensitive, subtle and unsettling...heartbreakingly honest...Delicate and deeply affecting."" - Barnes & Noble Review
""The three novellas collected here provide a varied portrayal of contemporary Indian life both urban and rural...united by complementary themes and, of course, by Desai's clear, precise and often lovely prose."" - BookReporter.com
From the Inside Flap
In The Museum of Final Journeys an unnamed government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of forgotten treasures, each sent home by the absent, itinerant master. As he is taken through the estate, wondering whether to save these precious relics, he reaches the final greatest gift of all, looming out of the shadows.
In Translator, Translated, middle-aged Prema meets her successful publisher friend Tara at a school reunion. Tara hires her as a translator, but Prema, buoyed by her work and the sense of purpose it brings, begins deliberately to blur the line between writer and translator, and in so doing risks unravelling her desires and achievements.
The final story is of Ravi, living hermit-like in the burnt-out shell of his family home high up in the Himalayan mountains. He cultivates not only silence and solitude but a secret hidden away in the woods, concealed from sight. When a film crew from Delhi intrude upon his seclusion, it compels him to withdraw even further until he magically and elusively disappears
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.
"
From the Back Cover
In ‘The Museum of Final Journeys’ an unnamed government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of forgotten treasures, each sent home by the absent, itinerant master. As he is taken through the estate, wondering whether to save these precious relics, he reaches the final – greatest – gift of all, looming out of the shadows.
In ‘Translator, Translated’, middle-aged Prema meets her successful publisher friend Tara at a school reunion. Tara hires her as a translator, but Prema, buoyed by her work and the sense of purpose it brings, begins deliberately to blur the line between writer and translator, and in so doing risks unravelling her desires and achievements.
The final story is of Ravi, living hermit-like in the burnt-out shell of his family home high up in the Himalayan mountains. He cultivates not only silence and solitude but a secret hidden away in the woods, concealed from sight. When a film crew from Delhi intrude upon his seclusion, it compels him to withdraw even further until he magically and elusively disappears…
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.
About the Author
Anita Desai is the author of Fasting, Feasting, Baumgartner's Bombay, Clear Light of Day, and Diamond Dust, among other works. Three of her books have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Desai was born and educated in India and now lives in the New York City area. Anita Desai is the author of Fasting, Feasting, Baumgartner's Bombay, Clear Light of Day, and Diamond Dust, among other works. Three of her books have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Desai was born and educated in India and now lives in the New York City area.
READER BIO
Anne is an accomplished British actress with lead credits in stage, TV, commercials, voiceovers and audio books. She has over 300 audio book titles, in all genres, to her credit, along with several awards and distinctions. These include an American Library Association Special Services for Children Award, two AudioFile Earphone Awards, a Sukey Howard Favorite Selection, USA Today Recommended Listening, and three Audie Nominations.
James Langton trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, he has performed many voice-overs and narrated numerous audiobooks, including the international bestseller The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud by Julia Navarro. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002. James was born in York, England, and is now based in New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
We had driven for never-ending miles along what seemed to be more a mudbank than a road between fields of viru lent green – jute? rice? what was it this benighted hinter - land produced? I ought to have known, but my head was pounded into too much of a daze by the heat and the sun and the fatigue to take in what my driver was telling me in answer to my listless questions.
The sun was setting into a sullen murk of ashes and embers along the horizon when he turned the jeep into the circular driveway in front of a low, white bungalow. This was the circuit house where I was to stay until I had found a place of my own. As a very junior officer, a mere subdivisional officer in the august government service, it was all I could expect, a temporary place for one of its minor servants. There was nothing around but fields and dirt roads and dust, no lights or signs of a town to be seen. Noting my disappointment and hesitation at the first sight of my new residence – where had we come to? – the driver climbed out first, lifted my bags from the back of the jeep and led the way up the broad steps to a long veranda which had doors fitted with wire screens one could not see through. He clapped his hands and shouted, ‘Koi hai?’ I had not imagined anyone still used that imperious announcement from the days of the Raj: Anyone there? But perhaps, in this setting, itself a leftover from the empire, not so incongruous at all. Besides, there was no bell and one cannot knock on a screen door.
I didn’t think anyone had heard. Certainly no light went on and no footsteps were to be heard, but in a bit someone came around the house from the back where there must have been huts or quarters for servants.
‘I’ve brought the new officer-sahib,’ the driver announced officiously (he wore a uniform of sorts, khaki, with lettering in red over the shirt pocket that gave him the right). ‘Open a room for him. And switch on some lights, will you?’
‘No lights,’ the man replied with dignity. He wore no uniform, only some loose clothing, and his feet were bare, but he held his back straight and somehow established his authority. ‘Power cut.’
‘Get a lantern then,’ the driver barked. He clearly enjoyed giving orders.
I didn’t, and was relieved when the chowkidar – for clearly he was the watchman for all his lack of a uniform – took over my bags and the driver turned to leave. It was night now, and when I saw the headlights of the jeep sweep over the dark foliage that crowded against the house and lined the driveway, then turn around so that the tail lights could be seen to dwindle and disappear, I felt my heart sinking. I did not want to stay in this desolate place, I wanted to run after the jeep, throw myself in and return to a familiar scene. I was used to city life, to the cacophony of traffic, the clamour and din and discordancy of human voices, the pushing and shoving of humanity, all that was absent here.
While I stood waiting on the veranda for a lamp to be lit so I could be shown to my room, I listened to the dry, grating crackle of palm leaves over the roof, the voices of frogs issuing low warnings from some invisible pond or swamp nearby, and these sounds were even more disquieting than the silence.
A lighted lantern was finally brought out and I followed its ghostly glow in, past large, looming pieces of furniture, to the room the chowkidar opened for me. It released a dank odour of mildew as of a trunk opened after a long stretch of time and a death or two, and I thought this was surely not a chapter of my life; it was only a chapter in one of those novels I used to read in my student days, something by Robert Louis Stevenson or Arthur Conan Doyle or Wilkie Collins (I had been a great reader then and secretly hoped to become a writer). I remembered, too, the hated voice of the gym master at school shouting ‘Stiffen up now, boys, stiffen up!’ and I nearly laughed – a bitter laugh.
All the actions that one performs automatically and habitually in the real world, the lighted world – of bathing, dressing, eating a meal – here had to be performed in a state of almost gelid slow motion. I carried the lantern into the bathroom with me – it created grotesquely hovering shadows rather than light, and made the slimy walls and floor glisten dangerously – and made do with a rudimentary bucket of water and a tin mug. To put on a clean set of clothes when I could scarcely make out what I had picked from my suitcase (packed with an idiotic lack of good sense: a tie? when would I ever wear a tie in this pit?) and then to find my way to the dining room and sit down to a meal placed before me that I could scarcely identify – was it lentils, or a mush of vegetables, and was this whitish puddle rice or what? – all were manoeuvres to be carried out with slow deliberation, so much so that they seemed barely worthwhile, just habits belonging to another world and time carried on weakly. The high-pitched whining of mosquitoes sounded all around me and I slapped angrily at their invisible presences.
Then, with a small explosion, the electricity came on and lights flared with an intensity that made me flinch. An abrupt shift took place. The circuit house dining room, the metal bowls and dishes set on the table, the heavy pieces of furniture, the yellow curry stains on the tablecloth all revealed themselves with painful clarity while the whine of mosquitoes faded with disappointment. Now large, winged ants insinuated their way through the wire screens and hurled themselves at the electric bulb suspended over my head; some floated down into my plate where they drowned in the gravy, wings detaching themselves from the small, floundering worms of their bodies.
I pushed back my chair and rose so precipitately, the chowkidar came forward to see what was wrong. I saw no point in telling him that everything was. Instructing him abruptly to bring me tea at six next morning, I returned to my room. It felt like a mercy to turn off the impudent light dangling on a cord over my bed and prepare to throw myself into it for the night.
I had not taken the mosquito net that swaddled the bed into account. First I had to fumble around for an opening to crawl in, then tuck it back to keep out the mosquitoes. At this I failed, and those that found themselves trapped in the netting with me, furiously bit at every exposed surface they could find. What was more, the netting prevented any breath of air reaching me from the sluggishly revolving fan overhead.
Throughout the night voices rang back and forth in my head: would I be able to go through with this training in a remote outpost that was supposed to prepare me for great deeds in public service? Should I quit now before I became known as a failure and a disgrace? Could I appeal to anyone for help, some mentor, or possibly my father, retired now from this very service, his honour and his pride intact like an iron rod he had swallowed?
Across the jungle, or the swamp or whatever it was that surrounded this isolated house, pai dogs in hamlets and homesteads scattered far apart echoed the voices in my head, some questioning and plaintive, others fierce and challenging.
If I had not been ‘stiffened up’ in school and by my father, I might have shed a tear or two into my flat grey pillow. I came close to it but morning rescued me.
Product details
- ASIN : B005LVQZES
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (December 6, 2011)
- Publication date : December 6, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 1420 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 181 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #899,553 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #162 in Indian Literature
- #674 in Australia & Oceania Literature
- #863 in American Literature Anthologies
- Customer Reviews:
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In "The Museum of Final Journeys," an old man from the countryside visits a new county official, begging for help. The old man has been working all his life for the same family, now dead or missing. The only son has traveled the world, collecting objects which he sends to his mother. After her death, the objects continue to arrive, and the old servant and his assistant must sell off the furniture to create a museum for these stuffed animals and birds, miniature paintings from Persia and the Mughal Empire, and antique weapons of war, among other things. The final gift is the one which the old man loves most, but it requires a great deal of maintenance. He begs the official to accept the other valuable objects in exchange for allowing him to preserve this one final gift. The servant and the official live in different worlds and have difficulties communicating.
"Translator Translated" is quite different. Prema Joshi, returning to her high school for Founder's Day, meets Tara, the brightest and most popular student at the school. Prema, a teacher, has been studying Oriya, her mother's language, particularly the work of Suvarna Devi, unknown beyond her hillside village. Tara, now a publisher of the work of previously unknown female writers, asks Prema to translate Suvarna Devi's first work, and every aspect of Prema's life changes. The second work by Devi, a novel, however, is trite and filled with cliches. "I saw that what was needed was for me to be inventive...and create a style for the book...I decided to take liberties with the text." The results are predictable, and the effects on Prema Joshi's modest life are significant.
"The Artist of Disappearance" tells of Ravi, an adult living in the burned remains of the family home. As Ravi's story evolves, his sensitivity to the world around him becomes clear, and his understanding of aesthetics regarding the natural world is particularly sophisticated. Ravi has created a hidden garden which represents the essence of beauty. At the same time, a group of young videographers is traveling the mountainside looking for examples of environmental despoliation. Ravi, too, finds his life permanently changed.
The importance of beauty and the problem of which beautiful aspects of the past deserve to be saved for future generations permeate this collection. Who should make the decisions about what, if anything, to save? How much beauty should be local? How should artifacts be preserved? As Desai explores these ideas in prose of almost crystalline purity and concision, her sensitivity to the idea of "less is more" prevails. Mary Whipple
A question for anyone who's read the stories, please let me know if these are the final words (don't worry, not enough to be a plot spoiler):
Museum of Final Journeys: the last words are "the much needed diversion." Location: 125 of 131
The Artist of Disappearance: the last words are "journey down to the plains." Location: 795 of 801
My rating: 1/2 star for Kindle version, but Ms. Desai probably deserves at least 3 stars if I could read the rest of each of the stories I was able to start!
I am now keen on reading her older books. It was a fluke buy and am I glad for it!
Unfortunately, none of the three stories was particularly gripping. while well written I did not find any of the characters truly captivating and none of the endings particularly interesting. Not one of Desai's best works by any means.
It is most annoying and very misleading when Amazon lists the kindle version along with the full edition. Very disappointing when you expect to have the whole book and only get part of it. DO NOT BUY THE KINDLE EDITION!
I will from now on check ALL reviews before making another purchase for my Kindle. I have had issues before with Kindle downloads (poor editing) but thought it was a random problem. Am seeing now it isn't.
Top reviews from other countries
Potent, lucid, detailed, deeply human. Each left me feeling deeply satisfied, and sometimes a bit sad.
The world of the stories seemed all too real.
There are what appear to be a couple of false notes too – in the first story there is a marriage (arranged apparently), but from the family names given, (Sinha & Mukherjee, and based on my admittedly limited knowedge), these appear to be two different castes in Bengal; also a bride of 13 and a groom of 60?
Then in the second story it is implied (by the description of the journey) that oriya is spoken only in some obscure region, whereas it is actually the language of the state of Orissa which has a population of over 33 million. (Added on 02/09/2016: The second story apparently has some similarity to an incident in Isabel Allende's life, when she worked as a translator.)
However, IMO, the third story, while also slightly outlandish, appears to hang together a little better.