Rosarita

Three of Desai’s (The Zigzag Way) eloquent novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her latest features Bonita, a young girl who has left her home in India to study Spanish in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She loves languages and has already studied French in France and Portuguese in Goa. When readers meet Bonita, she’s sitting on a park bench, reading the Spanish-language newspapers she just bought. A woman runs up to her, stops, and stares at her. The woman then informs Bonita that she’s been watching her and that she must be the daughter of Rosarita. And the woman is right. Bonita’s late mother was Rosarita, an upper-class Indian housewife. But to Bonita’s knowledge, her mother never traveled to Mexico, studied art, or danced the tango, as this strange woman asserts. Or did she?