The Inheritance of Loss

Winner of the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award, Kiran Desai's extraordinary novel of love and loss, now reissued with a new introduction by the author Published to astonishing acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, an embittered judge wants only to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge's cook watches over her distractedly, but his thoughts are usually on his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. As her characters' lives overlap and intertwine, Kiran Desai's brilliant novel illuminates a story of joy and despair, as well as the pain of exile and the ambiguities of postcolonialism.

About the Author :
Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and the Man Booker Prize winning novel The Inheritance of Loss. Educated in India, England, and the United States, she received her M.F.A. from Columbia University.

Review :
Praise for The Inheritance of Loss: Winner of the Man Booker Prize Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award "Kiran Desai's extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence . . . Desai's novel seems lit by a moral intelligence at once fierce and tender . . . Desai's prose has uncanny flexibility and poise . . . Marvel at Desai's artistic power."--Pankaj Mishra, New York Times Book Review (front page review) "It's a clash of civilizations, even empires . . . The idea of an old empire, the British one collides against the nouveaux riche American one. The story ricochets between the two worlds, held together by Desai's sharp eyes and even sharper tongue . . . [A] substantial meal, taking on heavier issues of land and belonging, home and exile, poverty and privilege, and love and the longing for it."--Sandip Roy, San Francisco Chronicle (front page review) "Briskly paced and sumptuously written, the novel ponders questions of nationhood, modernity, and class, in ways both moving and revelatory."--New Yorker "If book reviews just cut to the chase, this one would simply read: This is a terrific novel! Read it! Desai characters are so alive, the places so vivid, that we are always inside their lives. Her insights into human nature, rare for so young a write, juggle timeless wisdom and Twenty-first century self-doubt."--Ann Harleman, Boston Globe "Editor's Choice . . . Kiran Desai writes beautifully about powerless people as they tangle with the modern world and in so doing she casts her own powerful spell."--Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune "An endearing view of globalisation . . . The Inheritance of Loss is a book about tradition and modernity, the past and the future-and about the surprising ways both amusing and sorrowful, in which they all connect . . . A wide variety of readers should enjoy."--Boyd Tonkin, The Independent "Impressive . . . A big novel that stretches from India to New York; an ambitious novel that reaches into the lives of the middle class and the very poor; an exuberantly written novel that mixes colloquial and more literary styles; and yet it communicates nothing so much as how impossible it is to live a big, ambitious, exuberant life . . . Desai's prose becomes marvelously flexible . . . Always pulsing with energy."--The Guardian "A magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness."--Hermione Lee, chair of the 2006 Man Booker Prize "A sprawling and delicate book, like an ancient landscape glittering in the rain . . . Desai has a touch for alternating humor and impending tragedy that one associates with the greatest writers, and her prose is uncannily beautiful, a perfect balance of lyricism and plain speech."--O, The Oprah Magazine "An astute observer of human nature and a delectably sensuous satirist . . . Perceptive and bewitching . . . Desai is superbly insightful in her rendering of compelling characters, and in her wisdom regarding the perverse dynamics of society . . . Incisively and imaginatively dramatizes the wonders and tragedies of Himalayan life and, by extension, the fragility of peace and elusiveness of justice, albeit with her own powerful blend of tenderness and wit."--Booklist (starred review) "Stunning . . . In this alternately comical and contemplative novel, Desai deftly shuttles between first and third worlds, illuminating the pain of exile, the ambiguities of post-colonialism and the blinding desire for a 'better life' when one person's wealth means another's poverty."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "[An] exceptionally talented writer . . . She doesn't falter . . . penning a book that is wise, insightful and full of wonderfully compelling and conflicted characters . . . The Inheritance of Loss distinguishes her as a writer of note . . . A deft and often witty commentary on cultural issues . . . Abundant with illuminating detail and potent characters . . . With its razor insights and emotional scope The Inheritance of Loss amplifies a developing and formidable voice."--Jenifer Berman, Los Angeles Times "Desai is wildly in love with the light and landscape and the characters who inhabit it. Summer comes alive with its sights, sounds and smells, and the rainy season pours down with more force than in any other novel . . . [Desai has] a love of languages that few American writers her age seem able to rival . . . One of the most impressive novels in English of the past year."--Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune "Desai is a gorgeous writer, capable of pulling us along on a raft of sensuous images that are often beautiful not because what they describe are inherently so, but because she has shown their naked truth. It is her language that draws us in and pins us there. Elegant and brave."--Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books