Journey to Ithaca

by Anita Desai

A stirring and profound novel of spiritual quests and emotional exile. Young and in love, Sophie and Matteo share a dissatisfaction with their bourgeois upbringing and a yearning for spiritual fulfillment that brings them, like so many others, to India. But the realities of life on an ashram magnify the lovers’ differences. Pragmatic Sophie is horrified and disillusioned by the poverty and hardships they encounter; Matteo, a dreamer, sees only the purity of ascetic life. Eventually his personal search leads him away from Sophie and toward the Mother, a charismatic guru. In an effort to reclaim Matteo, Sophie embarks on her own journey for the truth about the Mother’s mysterious past. What these three people discover is at the heart of this masterful novel—that wisdom is found in the journey itself, and not at its destination.
 
“The richest and subtlest of her novels . . . Desai’s ‘truth’ is a peacock’s tail. Long after I closed this beautiful book, I watched the iridescent colors change, and change again.”— San Francisco Chronicle
 
“As always, Ms. Desai writes with intelligence and power. She has a remarkable eye for substance, the things that give life its texture.”— San Francisco Chronicle

Genres: Fiction, India, Indian Literature, Novels, Philosophy, Female Authors, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Anita Desai was born in 1937. Her published works include adult novels, children's books and short stories. She is a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Academy of Letters in Delhi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. Anita Mazumdar Desai is an Indian novelist and Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times. Her daughter, the author Kiran Desai, is the winner of the 2006 Booker prize.