Fire on the Mountain
Fire on the Mountain
Author: Anita Desai
Desc: A classic from one of India's greatest writers with a stunning new cover in water colour. Gone 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-granddaughter Raka is dispatched to Kasauli and everything changes. Nanda is at first dismayed at this break in her preciously acquired solitude. Fiercely taciturn Raka is like her quite untamed. The girl prefers the company of apricot trees and animals to her great-grandmother's and spends her 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. Marvellous yet restrained Fire on the Mountain speaks of the past and its unshakable hold over the present.