As Kiran Desai eyes a second Booker, we remember 3 times her mother Anita Desai made it to the shortlist

Indian Express

3 days ago

Indian-origin author Kiran Desai's long-awaited new novel The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny has made it to the 2025 Booker Prize longlist. Kiran, who won the Booker in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss, follows in the footsteps of her mother, Anita Desai, who was shortlisted for the Booker not once, but three times.
Here is a look at the trio of novels that brought Anita Desai to the cusp of the UK's most prestigious literary prize:
In her Booker debut, Desai delivered a storm of a novel, Clear Light of Day (Heinemann), which explores the unspoken tensions of a family gathered in their ancestral home. The story orbits around Tara, who returns to her childhood house only to find time and memory interweaving in disorienting ways. Desai's elegant prose lays bare the emotional sediment of the past, while capturing post-Partition India with poignant subtlety. Critics hailed it as a masterclass in psychological realism, earning Desai her first Booker nod and establishing her as an essential voice in postcolonial literature.
Desai's second Booker shortlisting came with In Custody (Heinemann), a wry, tragicomic look at a failed poet and a failing language. Deven, a timid Hindi professor, dreams of literary greatness through an interview with Urdu's greatest living poet, Nur. What unfolds is a series of frustrations, miscommunications, and the slow decay of idealism. Desai's portrayal of linguistic extinction and cultural compromise, rendered with ironic humor and deep empathy, proved once again her unmatched insight into India's shifting identity. The novel was later adapted into a film by Merchant Ivory Productions.
With Fasting, Feasting (Chatto & Windus), Desai returned to the Booker shortlist after a 15-year gap. The novel follows the contrasting lives of two siblings. Uma, who remains trapped in her Indian family home, and Arun, who is sent to the US in search of opportunity, but finds a different kind of emptiness. In around 250 pages, Desai crafts a rich cross-cultural narrative that probes family obligations, gender roles, and consumerism. Her subtle, restrained storytelling reveals emotional repression on both sides of the globe.
Anita Desai never claimed the Booker herself, but her triple shortlistings stand as a remarkable achievement in the prize's history.