SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Bonita, a young woman from India, sits in a park in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, when a stranger approaches to say that she looks just like her mother, whom she calls Rosarita. The woman says they studied art and partied together in Mexico decades before. Bonita, who is in Mexico studying languages says that's impossible. Her mother never went to Mexico. Her mother never painted. The woman must be mistaken or a trickster, as she begins to call her. And yet Bonita remembers a sketch in pastels that hung above her childhood bed. Is it possible that her mother had another life, not just before, but apart from her family?
"Rosarita" is the latest novel from the three-time Booker finalist Anita Desai, who has been writing acclaimed novels for six decades. She joins us now from Cold Springs, New York. Thank you so much for being with us.
ANITA DESAI: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: This woman almost flings herself on Bonita. Why doesn't Bonita just say, nope, you're wrong, can't be my mother?
DESAI: Well, when one is traveling, one has these strange encounters. They're not easy to dismiss. They're exactly what you came to find, to discover and to explore. So she has left India behind. She had not expected to find anything from India in Mexico. Yet here she is in Mexico, and she finds India all around her. She can't escape it.
SIMON: Please tell us about the picture above Bonita's childhood bed. It's of a mother and child, right?
DESAI: Yes. Well, it's something that Bonita as a child never paid much attention to. It was simply there. Certainly, she never connected it with her mother or with herself. But now in Mexico, with the words of the trickster in her ears, she begins to wonder if there was such a connection. That's what leads her on this part, not forwards, but backwards.
SIMON: I notice you refer to the woman as the Trickster. Does that settle the issue? Is that what she is?
DESAI: I leave it unsolved and up to the reader. There are times when she behaves like a trickster, she says things which seem so totally unlikely. And at other times, the narrator has glimpses of her, which reveal a very real person with very real feelings and a past. And in fact, they do go and visit a bit of her past also. I'm not sure she's a trickster or just a fantasist. To some extent, we all are, especially when we travel. We can invent our lives.
SIMON: Does Bonita recognize the person this woman says is her mother as the mother she knew?
DESAI: No, she didn't. She never knew that her mother was a painter or never knew that she ever went to Mexico. These things were never spoken of during her childhood in her home. So she has an entirely new picture of her mother, which had never occurred to her. There was no hint of it. And now the Trickster is trying to persuade her. And in a way, she is almost persuaded, not certain to the very end.
SIMON: Your novel might make a reader ask, do a lot of people, and women especially, have dual lives that never quite came to be. I said women not to exclude men, but to try and recognize that there are still in this world, a lot of women who subordinate themselves to the lives of men.
DESAI: Yes, I agree that women have to do so, because in a way, they do lead dual lives. They lead their own individual lives, and they lead the lives of their families as well. So part of them is divided anyway. And sometimes that individual life is allowed to exist, and very often, it is not and has to be suppressed or hidden. And in that way, yes, there are secrets there, too, just as they are in this book.
SIMON: What do you think fiction can do for people these days?
DESAI: I think fiction exists for many different reasons and for many different writers. But I think fiction should be used to tell the truth. Sometimes one can't tell the truth for various reasons. It begins to sound polemical. It is not acceptable to some readers as it is to others. And that's why I choose to tell my truths through fiction. There's a wonderful piece of advice given by an American poet, Emily Dickinson. I wonder if you know her lines. And she says, tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.
SIMON: Too bright for our infirmed delight. The truth superb surprise.
DESAI: Right. I think this is just the perfect message for a novelist, for a writer.
SIMON: Anita Desai - her new novel, "Rosarita." Thank you so much for being with us.
DESAI: Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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