Sita and her Mid-life Crisis: An Insight into Anita Desai’s Protagonist in Where Shall We Go This Summer?

Abstract

Anita Desai, born in 1937 in Mussoorie, India, is a novelist, short-story writer and children's author. Her works include Fire on the Mountain (1977), Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her children's book The Village by the Sea (1982), won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. Her other significant works are Games at Twilight and Other Stories (1978), Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), and Cry, The Peacock (1963). This paper explores mid-life crisis and elaborates how it plays a major role in the life of the protagonist in Anita Desai’s Where Shall We Go This Summer? The paper takes instances from the book to explain in depth the trauma a person who is in mid-life crisis goes through. It also uses Jane Polden’s Regeneration: Journey Through the Mid-Life Crisis to substantiate it’s arguments.