Anita Mazumdar Desai (born 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and the Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was born in Mussoorie, India.

She was a student at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School, Delhi and received her B.A. in English literature in 1957 from the University of Delhi. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.