Published Paper Details:

Anita Desai was born on 24 June 1937. She is an Indian novelist. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Price three times. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the mountain. The term cultural identity is related to the identity or feeling of belonging to a group. It has the aspects a person's self-conception and self-perception. The reflection of nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture which forms the cultural identity. Anita Desai's novel Bye-Bye Black Bird (1971) is an instance of the reflection of cultural identity through cultural encounters. The story revolves around two friends Dev, and Adit in London. Adit lives for a longer period in London and married an English woman, Sarah. The alienated Sarah looks for the cultural identity of self in her own land but unlike others, she never withdraws. Desai depicts Sarah's loneliness is different from other heroines because she chooses it deliberately whereas for her other characters its part of their nature.