In Custody

A frustrated small-town scholar lands the opportunity of a lifetime, but only encounters more frustration in Anita Desai’s touching comic novel.

"A major attempt to tackle serious themes... extraordinarily rich in incident and detail."  -  Sebastian Faulks

When Deven is asked to interview India’s greatest Urdu poet, Nur, he sees an opportunity to escape the miseries of his narrow life. But Deven’s hope for fame and fulfilment soon turn to disaster. The dissolute old man he finds deep in the bazaars of Old Delhi bears no resemblance to the idol of his youth, and as Deven is fooled, cheated and bullied by Nur and the people who surround him, the whole project seems destined to end in a new kind of captivity.

"A wry, gently humorous novel, full of wisdom and restraint... The author chronicles India lovingly but it would be a mistake to think of her simply as an Indian writer, for her themes are universal."  -  The FInancial Times

Anita Desai is the author of many novels & short stories and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She is the Emerita John E Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Royal Society of Literature.