Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai

One of the finest English language novelists of modern times.’ daily telegraph one are the days when nanda kaul watched over her family and played the part of vice – chancellor’s wife. Leaving her children behind in the real world, the busier world,she has chosen to spend her last years alone in the mountains in kasauli, in a secluded bungalow called carignano. Until one summer her great – grand daughter raka is dispatched to casual – and everything changes. Nanda is at first dismayed at this break in herpreciously acquired solitude. Fiercely taciturn, raka is, like her, quite untamed. The girlprefers the company of apricot trees and animals to her great – grandmother’s, and spendsher afternoons rambling over the mountainside. But the two are more alike than they know. Throughout the hot, long summer, nanda’s old, hidden dependencies and wounds come to the surface, ending, inevitably, in tragedy. Marvelous yet restrained, fire on the mountain speaks of the past and its unshakable hold over the present.‘Beautifully accomplished and memorable… she has the ability to shape and refine apiece of her own intense imagination into an independent work of art.’ The Times