Anita Desai

Nanda Kaul, a woman remote in her self-imposed solitude among the Simla hills of India, her strange and silent great-granddaughter, and the broken old woman who is her only friend are touched in varying ways by the violence of living

Fire on the Mountain

Nanda Kaul is old. She has chosen to spend her last years high up in the mountains where she can arrange her thoughts into tranquility. But her solitude is broken when her fragile and secretive great-grand-daughter, Raka, comes to stay. It is an intrusion Nanda Kaul deeply resents, but this child has a capacity to change things. Through the long hot summer months hidden dependencies and old wounds are uncovered, until tragedy seems as inevitable as a forest fire on the hillsides surrounding the villa.

Fire on the Mountain

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