The book Anita Desai: vision and Technique in Her Novels attempts in detail the text-based analysis of Anita Desai’s novels from Cry, The Peacock to journey to Ithaca. This study has been divided into six chapters and it focuses its attention on the critical-analytical study of the entire corpus of Desai’s novels, mainly through the four core chapters—"Plot-Structure", "Vision", "Search for Self" and "Narrative Technique". As Desai explores the hidden motives of man, the untrodden and unvisited regions of human psyche, she becomes symbolic and suggestive in dealing with the predicament of man vis-?-vis the social forces that subvert the protagonists progression in society. Almost all the protagonists of Desai have been entrusted with a Herculean task to work for their identity in society they belong to. They meet failures and disappointments while waging war against the negative and cruel social forces; but the failures and disappointments do not deter them from the persuasiveness of their objectives. The defeat, failure and disappointment make them suffer, but they suffer with tragic dignity. Thus, their sufferings, their indefatigableness, and their ceaseless strivings to exist in society make the novelist use the poetic and symbolic language almost in all her novels. Anita Desai employs in her novels, the varied images, metaphors, symbols and myths for bearing out the interior regions of human psyche, obsession, inner motives, latent desires and dormant impulses of human mind. In this study, the author has endeavoured to bring out the structural and visionary aspects of Mrs. Desai’s novels in order to make it more interesting and useful to scholars and students alike.
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