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Rosarita

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What to expect

'Anita Desai is a magnificent writer' - Salman Rushdie
'Every new work from her is a gift' - Kamila Shamsie
'Rosarita is transcendent . . . a testament to Desai’s enduring genius as a writer' - The Guardian
'Tantalising' - Financial Times

From three times Booker-shortlisted author Anita Desai, Rosarita is a beautiful, haunting novel that explores memory, grief, and a young woman’s determination to forge her own path.

A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss.

And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn’t paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.


**Praise for Meera Simhan**

'With vocal agility Simhan deftly shifts her tone and accent to realistically narrate diverse characters . . . Simhan's strength lies in narrating emotionally fraught passages that will move listeners' - AudioFile Magazine

**Praise for Anita Desai**

Hypnotically beautiful and subtle’ - Financial Times
‘Bewitchingly beautiful’ - The Times
‘Profoundly elegiac’ - New Statesman

Critics Review

It’s been over a decade since [Anita Desai's] last work of fiction. She’s a writer I’ve loved since my adolescence, whose sharp observations and elegant sentences I admire increasingly as the years go on. Every new work from her is a gift
Kamila Shamsie, Stylist
As taut and weird and entrancing as a story by Jorge Luis Borges. If Rosarita is to be her swansong . . . then it’s a magnificent way to go out
George Cochrane, The Telegraph (5 star review)
The three-times Booker-shortlisted writer is back with a poignant novella about one young woman’s thwarted attempt to escape her past . . . a thoughtful read that will delight Desai stalwarts and send newcomers scurrying to her impressive backlist; leaving all hopeful this won’t be her last piece of short fiction
Susie Mesure, The i
A tantalising tale of memory, family and fantasy . . . evocative, subtle and enigmatic. Desai revels in equivocation and possibility, embracing the ambiguity of memory itself to tell a shimmering, sometimes fevered tale in which a mother and daughter are pulled apart and fused together
Financial Times
There is a dreamy and wistful mood to this very short gem, lulling in its revelations and comforting in its gentle appeal. A wonder of a novel.
Paul Perry, Irish Sunday Independent
Her writing is sensuous, radical and uncannily perceptive
The Times
To compare Anita Desai's fiction with that of Chekhov or the short stories of Tolstoy is not extravagant; it is entirely warranted
Irish Times
Anita Desai is one of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture
Alison Lurie
All her stories are full of a confidence in human nature that is a rarity and a pleasure to encounter
The Spectator
Desai has a wicked, subtle humour . . . and her characters are beautifully described . . . Her writing is polished and mature, with a wit she cleverly underplays
Daily Telegraph
One of the most gifted of contemporary Indian writers
New Yorker
Anita Desai writes exquisitely
Scotsman
She has the ability to shape and refine a piece of work of her own intense imagination into an independent work of art
The Times
Desai writes powerfully and provocatively . . . Rosarita is a transcendent late gift: both a testament to Desai’s enduring genius as a writer and a wholly remarkable vindication of literature’s power to illuminate the conundrums of human experience. This is a novel of profound philosophical inquiry, pondering the enigmas of the mind and the self, the frontiers of fantasy and reality, and ultimately, whether one person can ever fully imagine and understand the life of another.
The Guardian
Rosarita tells of the universal craving to belong
Stevie Davies, The Literary Review
Strikingly vivid . . . this book is the literary equivalent of a lucid dream, a surreal and deeply personal experience
The Skinny
The perfect read for a sultry summer afternoon
The i
Poignant . . . this has Desai's insightful characterisations that craft a haunting narrative, offering readers a contemplative and deeply resonant meditation that lingers after the page
Chaya Colman and Sophie Ezra, Glamour, Best new books of July 2024, according to literary experts
Rosarita is a thoughtful read that will delight Desai stalwarts and send newcomers scurrying to her impressive backlist; leaving all hopeful that this won't be her last piece of short fiction
The i Paper
Who are you? Desai's first novel in a decade, written in the second person, turns brilliantly on this question
The Telegraph, The 75 hottest books of 2024 so far
Enigmatic . . . weaves a supple tale of memory, secrets, belonging and becoming
Hephzibah Anderson, Scottish Mail on Sunday, The Best New Fiction
It is beautifully told, the story itself also like a work of art. It is a perfect little gift to give oneself or another
Brid Conroy, Mayo News
Swirling under the delicacy of the prose is a terrible turbulence. Who was Rosarita?
Times Literary Supplement
The deceptively slender format can briskly encompass whole worlds and histories, or alternatively, like the short story, depend on strict excisions and limitations for its effects. Rosarita does both.
Spectator
A rewarding riddle of family inheritance and historical trauma
Guardian Books of the Year
Captivating
The Week Best novels: top books to read this year
Rosarita can be read in a mere hour or two, but its effects will be longer lasting
Financial Times Best books of 2024
A slim, enigmatic mystery . . . a ghostly meditation on truth and memory, violence and art
New York Times
This compelling short work of magical realism will stay in readers’ minds for a long time
Library Journal
A haunting meditation on identity and understanding . . . tantalizing
Kirkus
Tantalizing . . . elusive . . . Desai’s writing is determined to remind us how uncertain our world is
Chris Hewitt, The Minneapolis Star Tribune
Author Anita Desai
Narrator Meera Simhan
Duration 2 hours and 33 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781035044634
Format Audiobook
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Genre Family life fiction, Generational sagas, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: journeys and voyages, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Narrative theme: Social issues
Availability GB, IE

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