had become a media personality. Recalling his rise as an orator in Britain, Anthony Burgess writes that Desani demonstrated "... in live speech the vitality of the British rhetorical tradition, brilliant in Burke and Macaulay, decadent in Churchill, now dead." All About H. Hatterr and Hali It was, however, the publication in Britain in 1948 of his multi-cultural novel, with its broad colloquial style, All About H. Hatterr, that attracted wide attention on both sides of the Atlantic and in India. T. S. Eliot said of it, "... In all my experience, I have not met with anything quite like it. It is amazing that anyone should be able to sustain a piece of work in this style and tempo at such length." All About H. Hatterr broke publicity records for a book published that year (Writer, London). The tone of the reviewers was of surprise and awe (Newsweek, 1951). In the United States, too, Hatterr earned high critical acclaim. Orville Prescott, in his Book of the Week review, in The New York Times, said of it, "... To describe a rainbow to a child born blind would not be much more difficult than to describe the unique character of All About H. Hatterr ... as startling as a unicorn in the hall bedroom. Reading it issues dizzy spells, spots before the eyes, consternation, and even thought." Saul Bellow, also in The New York Times, chose it for his 1952 Book of the Year selection, (calling it) the book "I love". Decades later Salman Rushdie wrote that "Hatterr's dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English language." Desani's ""Hali: A Play,"" was published in 1950. It was described as "completely different from Hatterr," by T.S. Eliot who – along with E.M. Forster – provided a brief foreword to the 30-plus page booklet. Eliot called Hali's imagery "... often terrifyingly effective." while Forster wrote, "... It keeps evoking heights above the Summit-City of normal achievement." Other comments were less positive. Eliot added in his foreword, "Hali is not likely to appeal quickly to the taste of many readers." Forster commented, "It depends upon a private mythology – a dangerous device." Hali and Collected Stories was published in 1991. Spiritual quest After his return to India in 1952, he spent nearly 15 years in intense 'spiritual' pursuits. Under guidance of numerous gurus and