The Generational Confrontation in Clear Light of the Day

Anita Desai's sixth novel Clear Light of Day was published 1980. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, although it did not win. Desai considers it her most autobiographical work. The novel Clear Light of Day "surpasses all other novels in English set in India in characterization, poetic use of landscape and integrity of vision"³. Set in India's Old Delhi, Clear Light of Day is Anita Desai's tender, warm, and compassionate novel about family scars, the ability to forgive and forget, and the trials and tribulations of familial love. At the novel's heart are the moving relationships between the members of the Das family, who have grown apart from each other. It is four dimensional novels as it is about time as a destroyer, as a preserver and about what the bondage of time does to people. In the book, Old Delhi is frequently referred to as old, stagnate or decaying. Old Delhi is overcrowded and generally overlooked in favor of New Delhi. New Delhi is considered vibrant, modern and alive. In the book New Delhi is where the characters, specifically Bakul, go to avoid the soporific effects of Old Delhi or even to be connected with the outside world. Bim is in New Delhi when she hears of Gandhi's death, and Raja finds diversion and entertainment as a teenager in New Delhi. In this novel Desai paints the backdrop of the major incidents exclusively with the support of her characters- Bim, Meera Masi, Tara and Baba, who form the major action. Set in Old Delhi, this book describes the tensions in a post-partition Indian family during and after childhood, starting with the characters as adults and moving back into their lives through the course of the book. As Vinay Dubey says, the novel "describes the emotional relations