Skip to product information
1 of 1

The Village by the Sea

The Village by the Sea

by Anita Desai

Regular price $12.99
Regular price $0.00 Sale price $12.99
Format

Anita Desai’s The Village by the Sea is an exciting and moving story about life in an Indian coastal village and life in the unimaginably big city of Bombay. It is the story of thirteen-year-old Lila and her twelve-year-old brother, Hari. As the book begins, Lila is wading into the sea to bring scarlet hibiscus, sweet-smelling lilies, and butter-yellow allamanda flowers to the sacred rock the fishermen’s wives pray to, just as her mother did before her father had to sell his boat to pay his debts and her mother fell ill. Now Lila and Hari must care for their ailing parents as well as their two younger sisters. Sensing adventure and a chance to save his family, and possibly his village, Hari impulsively joins a group of farmers and fishermen traveling to Bombay to protest the construction of a fertilizer factory that threatens to pollute the coastline and destroy their livelihood. Will the protest succeed? Can Hari survive in the city, and can Lila manage at home without him? Through their own resources, and the kindnesses of strangers, Hari and Lila must find a way to “Adapt! Adapt!” as their ornithologist friend urges, just as the birds and animals must do to survive.

Additional Book Information

Series: NYRB Kids
ISBN: 9781681373515
Pages: 272
Publication Date:

Praise

With any luck this reprint will introduce a fresh cohort of readers age 9 and older to Ms. Desai's superb work.
The Wall Street Journal

Desai’s story-telling skill is as keen as ever, her evocation of Hari is…one of those rare tales that both children and adults can read and enjoy…. Desai tells this story, a fairy-tale almost, in English that is lucid, and evocative of the hopes, the fears, the smells and the sounds of a little fishing village getting ready for greater things…. Village is a stylistic triumph that matches the victory of a boy and a girl whose grit pulled them through.
India Today

A very powerful story that fully deserves its place as a modern classic.
—Andrea Reece, LoveReading4Kids (blog)

View full details
  • Shopping for someone else but not sure what to give them? Give them the gift of choice with a New York Review Books Gift Card.

    Gift Cards 
  • A membership for yourself or as a gift for a special reader will promise a year of good reading.

    Join NYRB Classics Book Club 
  • Is there a book that you’d like to see back in print, or that you think we should consider for one of our series? Let us know!

    Tell us about it