Baumgartner's Bombay

A beautifully written richly textured and haunting story (Chaim Potok) BAUMGARTNER''S BOMBAY is Anita Desai''s classic novel of the Holocaust era a story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany -- and his Jewish heritage -- for India only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war''s end. In this tale of a man who like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny (NEW LEADER) Desai''s capacious intelligence her unsentimental compassion (NEW REPUBLIC) reach their full height.