A beautifully written, richly textured, and haunting story (Chaim Potok), BAUMGARTNERS BOMBAY is Anita Desais 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 wars end. In this tale of a man who, like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny (NEW LEADER), Desais capacious intelligence, her unsentimental compassion (NEW REPUBLIC) reach their full height.