Journey to Ithaca

By Anita Desai

Book Overview

A stirring and profound novel of spiritual quests and emotional exile. Young and in love, Sophie and Matteo share a dissatisfaction with their bourgeois upbringing and a yearning for spiritual fulfillment that brings them, like so many others, to India. But the realities of life on an ashram magnify the lovers' differences. Pragmatic Sophie is horrified and disillusioned by the poverty and hardships they encounter; Matteo, a dreamer, sees only the purity of ascetic life. Eventually his personal search leads him away from Sophie and toward the Mother, a charismatic guru. In an effort to reclaim Matteo, Sophie embarks on her own journey for the truth about the Mother's mysterious past. What these three people discover is at the heart of this masterful novel--that wisdom is found in the journey itself, and not at its destination. "The richest and subtlest of her novels . . . Desai's 'truth' is a peacock's tail. Long after I closed this beautiful book, I watched the iridescent colors change, and change again."-- San Francisco Chronicle "As always, Ms. Desai writes with intelligence and power. She has a remarkable eye for substance, the things that give life its texture."-- San Francisco Chronicle

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140258183
• ISBN13: 9780140258189
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Remarkable

Matteo and Sophie travel to India where he searches for spiritual enlightenment while she sulks in boredom and disdain. Desai does a remarkable job of capturing the spirit of the seeker, the hypocrisy of those who prey upon them, the disappointment and destruction that seeking can bring, the relief of finding one's true teacher, and the escstasy of meeting god. A truly rich, beautiful, and compelling story that makes the reader loathe to put the book down. If Desai's other novels are on par with this one (and I intend to find out), her books will be filling my shelves.

Gorgeous.

Desai is a writer who repays re-reading. This book is subtle and textured. The author plays marvelously with time and consciousness in ways reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, brought up to date.