A beautifully written, richly textured, and haunting story (Chaim Potok), BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY is Anita Desai 's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany -- and his Jewish heritage -- for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. In this tale of a man who, like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny (NEW LEADER), Desai's capacious intelligence, her unsentimental compassion (NEW REPUBLIC) reach their full height.