Hugo Baumgartner, the central character of Anita Desai's dazzling novel, is a wandering Jew all his life. From the agonising scenes of his childhood in pre-war Berlin, through his spell in business in Calcutta and then Bombay, he simply does not belong. Too dark for Hitler's society he is too fair for India; he remains a firanghi, a foreigner, wherever he goes' Daily Telegraph 'Anita Desai writes beautifully, employing an opulent vocabulary to great effect in her physical descriptions.The achievement of a superior writer' Literary Review'A book that puts to shame all the little epithets and pert cliches that praise may offer' London Review of Books