Saturday, August 17th, 2002

Bharati Murkherjee, born to a Hindu Brahmin family in Calcutta, India, is the author of five novels (including The Tiger's Daughter and Jasmine) and two short story collections, including Darkness and The Middleman and Other Stories, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1988. Her first novel in nine years is the recently published Desirable Daughters(Theia, hd. 24.95), an independent bookseller favorite recently named a Book Sense 76 selection. The novel tells the story of the youngest daughter of a traditional Brahmin family in India who moves away to California while still remaining close with her two sisters back home. "Bharati Murkerjee has long been one of our best, most concentrated writers, and Desireable Daughters, with its broadband vision of history and geography, is her finest novel so far," commends Russell Banks.

Mukherjee, a professor of English at the University of California Berkley, will be visiting the campus of the University of Mississippi's McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College.

Go here for a good overview of her career:

Bharati will start reading at 5 p.m. instead of the usual time, as she has to leave early.