2 Kiran Desai novels to read while we wait for Booker-nominated ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny'

Indian Express

2 days ago

Indian author Kiran Desai's upcoming novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, has made it to the 2025 Booker longlist. This is the second time that Desai's book has made it to the list; her previous 2006 novel, The Inheritance of Loss had won the Booker Prize.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, is set to release on September 25. The novel chronicles the story of two youngsters caught between continents, generations, and expectations. Their love story unfolds across India and the United States, tracing the invisible ties of family, tradition, and desire in a rapidly changing world.
Her mother, Anita Desai, has also made it to the shortlist three times. As we await this long-anticipated new work from one of India's most acclaimed novelists, here are two of her earlier books:
Kiran Desai's debut novel is a delightfully offbeat tale set in a sleepy Indian town. Sampath Chawla, a dreamy underachiever born during a drought, seeks solitude by climbing a guava tree. To his surprise, he is mistaken for a holy man, drawing worshippers, spies, and mischief-makers to his perch. Before he knows it, this transforms into a surreal spectacle involving a gang of thieving, drunken monkeys and a town descending into chaos. Desai blends magic realism with satire, capturing the absurdity of bureaucracy, the yearning for transcendence, and the strangeness of small-town life. Beneath its humour, the novel gently probes questions of identity, escape, and the line between wisdom and folly.
Kiran Desai's second novel, written over seven years, won the 2006 Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award among others. Set in 1986 against the backdrop of the Gorkhaland movement in northeastern India, the novel explores the dislocations of colonial legacy and globalisation. The story centers on two characters living vastly different but intertwined lives. Biju, the son of a cook, is an undocumented immigrant in the United States, drifting from one low-paying kitchen job to another. Sai, the anglicised granddaughter of a bitter retired judge, lives in Kalimpong with her grandfather Jemubhai Patel, the cook, and her dog, Mutt. Her parents, one Gujarati, the other a Zoroastrian orphan, are long gone, leaving her suspended between inherited privilege and rootlessness. The novel contrasts Biju's lonely struggle for dignity abroad with Sai's insulated existence and growing awareness of social fracture at home. Through its intimate portraits, The Inheritance of Loss lays bare the contradictions of postcolonial India where reverence for Western ideals coexists with resentment, and where no character, whether anglicised or traditional, is truly at ease in the world they inhabit.