Readers picking up a novel called In Custody might expect a prison narrative, a story about a person trapped in jail. They wouldn't be entirely wrong, as the story is about people who are trapped. However, the only escape is not a jailbreak, but rather living in contentment instead of expectation.
Published in 1984, not even 40 years after Pakistan separated from India in the partition of 1947, Anita Desai's In Custody chronicles the failed attempts of a minor academic named Deven Sharma to interview his idol, the Urdu poet Nur Shahjenabadi. A professor of Hindi at the tiny Lala Ram Lal College in Mirpore, India, Deven wrote an unpublished monograph about Nur and has published a few...
