Rosarita

From the three times Booker-shortlisted author

De: Anita Desai

Narrado por: Meera Simhan

'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

Reseñas de la Crítica

It&rsquo;s been over a decade since [Anita Desai's] last work of fiction. She&rsquo;s a writer I&rsquo;ve loved since my adolescence, whose <b>sharp observations and elegant sentences</b> I admire increasingly as the years go on. <b>Every new work from her is a gift</b> (Kamila Shamsie, Stylist)

As <b>taut and weird and entrancing</b> as a story by Jorge Luis Borges. If <i>Rosarita </i>is to be her swansong . . . then it&rsquo;s a <b>magnificent </b>way to go out (George Cochrane, The Telegraph (5 star review))

The <b>three-times Booker-shortlisted writer </b>is back with a poignant novella about one young woman&rsquo;s thwarted attempt to escape her past . . . <b>a thoughtful read that will delight Desai stalwarts and send newcomers scurrying to her impressive backlist</b>; leaving all hopeful this won&rsquo;t be her last piece of short fiction (Susie Mesure, The i)

A <b>tantalising</b> tale of memory, family and fantasy . . . <b>evocative, subtle and enigmatic</b>. Desai revels in equivocation and possibility, embracing the ambiguity of memory itself to tell a <b>shimmering, sometimes fevered tale in which a mother and daughter are pulled apart and fused together</b>

There is a <b>dreamy and wistful </b>mood to this very short gem, lulling in its revelations and comforting in its gentle appeal. <b>A wonder of a novel.</b> (Paul Perry, Irish Sunday Independent)

Her writing is <b>sensuous, radical and uncannily perceptive</b>

To compare Anita Desai's fiction with that of Chekhov or the short stories of Tolstoy is not extravagant; it is entirely warranted

Anita Desai is one of the most<b> brilliant and subtle </b>writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture (Alison Lurie)

All her stories are <b>full of a confidence in human nature that is a rarity and a pleasure </b>to encounter

Desai has a <b>wicked, subtle humour</b> . . . and <b>her characters are beautifully described</b> . . . Her writing is polished and mature, with a wit she cleverly underplays

One of the most gifted of contemporary Indian writers

Anita Desai writes <b>exquisitely</b>

She has the ability to shape and refine a piece of work of her own intense imagination into an <b>independent work of art</b>