Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Desai, Anita (Vol. 175) - Katharine Capshaw Smith (essay date April 1997)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Katharine Capshaw Smith (essay date April 1997)

SOURCE: Smith, Katharine Capshaw. “Narrating History: The Reality of the Internment Camps in Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 28, no. 2 (April 1997): 141-57.

[In the following essay, Smith contrasts the experiences of the imprisoned protagonist of Baumgartner's Bombay with the similar autobiographical account of Heinrich Harrar in Seven Years in Tibet, demonstrating not only the historical veracity of Desai's representation but also its effects on the development of Baumgartner's conflicted character.]

Baumgartner's Bombay is a text deeply concerned with intrusion of history into an individual's interior life. Desai weaves Hugo Baumgartner's experience of Kristallnacht and pre-Holocaust Germany with descriptions of India's partition riots in order to create a realistic—and historical—image of...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Seema Jena (essay date 1989)
   2. Bharati A. Parikh (essay date summer 1993)
   3. Pippa Brush (essay date 1996)
   4. Minoli Salgado (essay date summer 1996)
   5. Rajeswari Mohan (essay date 1997)
   6. Uma Parameswaran (review date winter 1997)
   7. Katharine Capshaw Smith (essay date April 1997)
   8. Tony Simoes da Silva (essay date July 1997)
   9. Gabriele Annan (review date 27 May 1999)
   10. Shirley Chew (review date 28 May 1999)
   11. Frederick Luis Aldama (review date winter 2000)
   12. Sarah Curtis (review date 26 May 2000)
   13. Shyamala A. Narayan (review date winter 2001)
   14. Robin Gerster (review date 12 January 2002)
   15. Cindy Lacom (essay date fall 2002)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright