Kiran Desai (born 3 September 1971) is an Indian author.

She is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize[1] and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.

Early life
Desai is the daughter of the Anita Desai, herself short-listed for the Booker Prize on three occasions. She was born in New Delhi, India, and lived there until she was 10. She left India at 14, and she and her mother then lived in England for a year, and then moved to the United States, where she studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia University.[2]

Work
Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998 and received accolades from such notable figures as Salman Rushdie.[3] It won the Betty Trask Award,[4] a prize given by the Society of Authors for the best new novels by citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35.[5] Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, (2006) was widely praised by critics throughout Asia, Europe and the United States. It won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, as well as the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.[6][citation needed] In September 2007, Desai was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme hosted by Michael Berkeley on BBC Radio 3.[7][citation needed] In May 2007 she was the featured author at the inaugural Asia House Festival of Cold Literature. Desai's Jemubhai Patel in The Inheritance of Loss and her mother Anita Desai's Nanda Kaul in Fire on the mountain have some similarities. Both of them want to lead a secluded life. They do not wish to be disturbed by others. Their grandchild is the first one who disturbs their aloneness. At first, they feel the presence of their grandchild embarrassing. But, they gradually understand that there are certain similarities between them and their grandchildren. In the portrayal of Jemubhai Patel, Kiran Desai must have been inspired by the character, Nanda Kaul of her mother.[citation needed]

Private life
In January 2010, Orhan Pamuk, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, publicly acknowledged that he was in a relationship with Desai.[8]

old Type: What was your process for writing this book--did you start with the characters or with the plot? Kiran Desai: I started with a very small idea, really. I'd read a story in the Times of India and heard about a character from many people, a man who was a very famous hermit in India who really did climb up a tree, who lived in a tree for many, many years, until he died. He died last year, I believe. So I began to wonder what it was about someone like this who would do something as extreme as to spend his life in a tree. So it started really with that character, and then the story built up around it. When I started writing it I had no idea what the story would be; I had no idea of the plot. It sort of gathered momentum and drew me along. It was an incredibly messy process and I don't know if it was the smartest way to go about it because this was my first book, so I had to teach myself how to write as I was writing it, and I don't know if I went about it the right way but I certainly had a lot of fun. It was very messy though--I had to throw out many pages--about half the book I think I ended up editing. Once I was aware of all the different ways to go, all the plot turns to take. BT: So how did you know when you were done, when the story was complete? KD: I think that's perhaps the hardest thing, to know when you've finished, because it seems like you can always go on polishing and polishing and working on it some more. But after a while I think I was so close to it that I couldn't even see it anymore; it didn't make sense to continue on my own, and so I finally showed it to my agent and wanted an editor to help me take it to the next level. But, I also realized that after a point you can't go on perfecting something and polishing it and making it better, because you lose something in the process, the freshness of it, and I realized that even if it wasn't completely perfect I had to leave it; it was enough--I couldn't work on it any more. It's a balance; if you perfect one thing you lose something else, and that's the stage where I think you have to know when to stop.

BT: Which character or part was the most fun for you to write? KD: It was a fun book to write, certainly. I was so happy the entire time I was writing it. I grew very fond of all the characters, perhaps Sampath and his sister the most. The characters were what made me happy, what drew me to the story in a way. What was difficult was the rest of it, balancing the complicated plots and interweaving them; that was harder and less fun. BT: Some writers say that their characters continue to live in them after the book is done--do you miss your characters now that you've finished writing about them? KD: Yes, you know, you live with these characters for years and you live in the settings--I lived in the little village that I created for so long that at first I was bereft when the book was finished; I didn't know what to do. But now no, now I have other ideas in my head; I've moved on. It's been over a year since I last really looked at it. BT: Can you give a little background about your life and your education, how you got to where you are today? KD: I was born in India, grew up in India, left when I was fourteen and spent a year in England, and then I moved to the States and I have been studying here ever since. I went to high school in Massachusetts and then undergraduate in Vermont--at Bennington--and then to a writing program called Hollins, in Virginia, where I really started writing this book. Then I went on to Columbia but I took two years off to finish the book; I couldn't go to school and write at the same time. I couldn't write a novel in the writing workshop environment. BT: Was your mother a direct influence on your writing? KD: I'm sure she did have a big influence, because all my life I've grown up hearing her talk about writing and literature and books. It was wonderful to have her around when I was writing this book, to talk to her through this whole process. She was wonderful through the whole thing. It's a big risk to take, spending years of your life doing something that you're not sure how it's going to turn out, and she was very good through that whole time, not providing critical support as much as emotional support. A very motherly role, really. BT: Who are some of your favorite writers, or some of your favorite works? KD: I read all different kinds of books, but I like Ichiguru's work a lot and Kenzaburo Oe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Narayan. One of my favorite books is Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, which I read over and over again. I also read a lot of poetry. BT: These days a lot of international writers are being published in the United States and a lot of

American writers are being published abroad--can you comment on these developments in the publishing industry? KD: Yes, a lot of Indian writers are being published in this country, more than ever before, which is very exciting for us, because it is a whole new world for us to be part of. In England, of course, there's been much more of a tradition of publishing Indian writers. It's interesting when you are writing in a country where the publishing world is not as well-developed as it is in the west, and I think it's changing now in India. Suddenly, publishing is growing much quicker; they're publishing many more books than ever before and more people are buying books than ever before, so it's a change over there as well. It used to be the case that really you had to be published abroad in order to make a living as a writer and to have access to this whole machine, this publishing machine of the west--it's a big advantage I think for us in India who grew up speaking English. It's very nice to have access to this of course, in terms of the publishing side of things. But otherwise, in terms of the writing it's wonderful because it is more exciting for writers and when more books are published from other countries it's more exciting for the reader as well. BT: Are there American writers who have been influences on your work? KD: Yes, definitely. I love Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor. I read a lot of American writers. The publishing world is growing smaller, which is very nice.

BT: Do you have any private rituals or special environments that you need to create in order to write best? KD: Well, I carried this book around all over the place when I was writing it, just took it with me everywhere--I was writing in India and in this country and in Mexico and in different environments and different rooms everywhere. I had to be quite adaptable, I think, to try and work wherever I was. But now I live with all these roommates, a house full of people, people coming and going, and I find it impossible to write and I'm becoming really neurotic where I have to just shut myself in and try to get some work done. I really like working in the kitchen; I find that wherever I am I work near the kitchen or in the kitchen itself. I can constantly make myself little things to eat or cups of tea; I find it's the perfect balance, in that I can write a bit, eat a cookie, and then I write a bit more, eat some ice cream. Reward myself-- it's constant rewards. And I work best in the morning, as soon as I get out of bed I start writing, and late at night. I have dead space in the afternoon, which I think comes from growing up with an afternoon siesta; my brain just shuts off from about two to five.

BT: I loved the role that food plays in the book--Kulfi, the mother's obsession with food, for example-is this a fascination of yours?

KD: It's a great interest of mine; it's so much a part of my life. I'm always in the kitchen, cooking and experimenting--I love it. And every now and then I think, "I should write a cookbook" or, "I should write for food magazines. And then I get drawn back to writing fiction again. But yes, food is a big part of my life. BT: Your characters are so well-rounded--quirky, diverse--were they figments of your imagination or did you write people you know into the story? Did you write yourself into the book? KD: They're made up of bits and pieces of people I know--the main characters are--and other characters are totally imagined. But of course I'm sure they all do have bits of me in them as well, different parts of my personality. BT: Are you the narrator? KD: Yes, I would say so. I do feel very close to this book in one way, but the book is very much a product of my imagination as well. BT: How would you classify this book--a comedy, a fable, a combination of styles? KD: I wouldn't really--it is a comedy and it is satiric in many ways I think, and it's fantastic. It reads very much like a folktale or a fairy tale so I think it has different sides, different words can be used to describe it. It depends on how you read it, I suppose. BT: What type of audience would you like to read your work? KD: You know, I never thought of the audience; it was written very much for myself, very much for selfish reasons, I think. But I think anyone with a sense of humor would enjoy it--I hope. That's one of the basic requirements. BT: In writing classes one's often taught to flesh out every character and plot twist well in advance, and you're proof that that's not always the necessary formula. As you said, you had an unconventional method for writing Hullabaloo; this being your first book, do you have any advice for aspiring writers? KD: There are all kinds of theories that you get told in writing workshops--"Write what you know," and that sort of thing, which I don't believe at all. I think one of the great joys of writing is to try and explore what you don't know, that's exciting to me. There are all kinds of little things--show, don't tell--I just wouldn't pay attention to any of that really. I don't think you can write according to a set of rules and laws; every writer is so different. I can't imagine how they come up with these rules--they're really ludicrous. You can't learn to write in that fashion. What inspired me really was reading, reading a lot and learning from other writers. Learning how they are going about something--I was very aware of that

when I was writing this book. Every book that I read at the same time I'd think, "Hmm--how do they do this?" Looking at it in that way, from a technical point of view, which we don't usually do as a reader. But really I think that's for me what was important; I was training myself to look at my work with a critical eye. BT: How much research did you do for this book? Is that important for your writing? KD: Pretty much none for this book--it was all made up. But I can imagine it would be fun to write about another place and time and do something different. I'm trying to do some research now for the next thing I want to write. I imagine it's a difficult balance--I'm sure you can over-research something and have your fiction not really be fiction anymore. It would be hard to know when to stop. BT: What are your future plans? KD: I finish university in May, finally. And then I hope I will be able to go away and write, because I miss it dreadfully.

Photo credit Marion Ettlinger

Writers

Writers Directory About the Directory

Add to researchKiran Desai

Penguin
Born India Genre Fiction

Biography Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971 and grew up there before moving to England, aged fourteen years.

She was educated in India, England and the US. Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998) won a 1998 Betty Trask Award, and her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), set in the mid 1980s in a Himalayan village, won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Critical Perspective As might be expected from the rich input of her cultural background, Kiran Desai, daughter of the author Anita Desai, is a born story-teller.

Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998), is a pacy, fresh look at life in the sleepy provincial town of Shahkot in India. The central character of the novel, Sampath Chawla, failed postal clerk and pathological dreamer, escapes from his work and his oppressive family to live in a guava tree. Here he spends his life snoozing, musing and eating the ever-more exotic meals cooked for him by his sociopathic mother. He begins to amaze his fellow townspeople by revealing intimate details about them gleaned from a bit of lazy letter-opening whilst still working at the post office and by spouting a series of truisms worthy of a Shakespearian fool, or Forrest Gump. Before long he becomes known as a local guru and attracts such a strong flow of visitors that opening hours have to be established in the orchard to allow him to rest. Soon, commercialism, a recurrent theme in Desais work, takes over: Sampaths fast-thinking, entrepreneurial father Mr Chawla, who at first despaired at his sons inanity, now sees his chance to make the familys fortune. He sets up his picturesque family in a compound around the guava tree that is soon lined with colourful advertisements for tailors, fizzy drinks, talcum powder and insect repellent. Visitors bring gifts that Mr Chawla can sell, the family bank account begins to grow and he looks at investment plans. All goes well until the arrival in the orchard of a group of langur monkeys who have developed a taste for alcohol and begin to terrorise the town. The tale continues, with a growing sense of impending doom, as the family and the various officials of

the town try to resolve the monkey problem. Like many important works of literature, the book can be read on several levels as an inventive, fast-moving, delicious tale full of rich descriptions and marvellous comic cartoon-like personalities, but also as a deeper study of the pathos of familial misunderstanding, the ridiculousness of hero-worship, the unpredictability of commercialism and the ineptness of officialdom. Many of these themes are explored further in Desais next novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006). The story revolves around the inhabitants of a town in the north-eastern Himalayas, an embittered old judge, his granddaughter Sai, his cook and their rich array of relatives, friends and acquaintances and the effects on the lives of these people brought about by a Nepalese uprising. Running parallel with the story set in India we also follow the vicissitudes of the cooks son Biju as he struggles to realise the American Dream as an immigrant in New York. Like its predecessor, this book abounds in rich, sensual descriptions. These can be sublimely beautiful, such as in the images of the flourishing of nature at the local convent in spring: 'Huge, spread-open Easter lilies were sticky with spilling antlers; insects chased each other madly through the sky, zip zip; and amorous butterflies, cucumber green, tumbled past the jeep windows into the deep marine valleys.' They can also be horrific, such as in descriptions of the protest march: 'One jawan was knifed to death, the arms of another were chopped off, a third was stabbed, and the heads of policemen came up on stakes before the station across from the bench under the plum tree, where the towns people had rested themselves in more peaceful times and the cook sometimes read his letters. A beheaded body ran briefly down the street, blood fountaining from the neck ...'. The Inheritance of Loss is much more ambitious than Hullabaloo in its spatial breadth and emotional depth. It takes on huge subjects such as morality and justice, globalisation, racial, social and economic inequality, fundamentalism and alienation. It takes its reader on a see-saw of negative emotions. There is pathos - which often goes hand in hand with revulsion for example in the description of the judge's adoration of his dog Mutt, the disappearance of which rocks his whole existence, set against his cruelty to his young wife. There is frequent outrage at the deprivation and poverty in which many of the characters live, including the cooks son in America; and there is humiliation, for example in the treatment of Sai by her lover-turned-rebel, or Lola, who tries to stand up to the Nepalese bullies. Against these strong emotions however, Desai expertly injects doses of comedy and buffoon-like figures. One of these is Biju's winsome friend Saeed, an African (Biju 'hated all black people but liked Saeed'), with a slyer and much more happy go lucky attitude to life. Whereas Biju finds it difficult to have a conversation even with the Indian girls to whom he delivers a take away meal, Saeed 'had many girls': '"Oh myee God!! he said. Oh myee Gaaaawd! She keep calling me and calling me, he clutched at head, aaaiii...I don't know what to do!!... It's those dreadlocks, cut them off and the girls will go.'

'But I don't want them to go! Much of the comedy also arises from the Indian mis or over-use of the English language. Result equivocal the young Judge wrote home to India on completing his university examinations in Britain. What, asked everyone does that mean? It sounded as if there was a problem, because un words were negative words, those basically competent in the English agreed. But then (his father) consulted the assistant magistrate and they exploded with joy .' Bose, the Judges friend from his university days is a wonderfully optimistic but pompous individual, made all the more ridiculous by his over-use of British idioms 'Cheeri-o, right-o, tickety boo, simply smashing, chin-chin, no siree, hows that, bottoms up, I say!' An original and modern aspect of Desais style is the almost poet-like use she makes of different print forms on the page: she uses italics for foreign words as if to emphasise their exoticness and untraslatability and capitals for emphasis when someone is angry, expressing surprise or disbelief (a natural development of the netiquette that to write in capitals is like shouting). She also exploits our modern mania for lists. In an age where our media is filled with top tens and top one hundreds most voted-for politician, best-dressed woman, richest man etc. Desai produces her own array of matter of fact but quite unnerving lists the parts of their bodies which touch when Gyan and Sai kiss; the free gifts that you get from a charity if you make a donation to a cow shelter; the wide variety of puddings that the cook is able to make, the list rattled off with no spaces as if expressing both the urgency of the speaker to impress and his perplexity at the foreignness of English pudding names. One of the most thought-provoking lists is 'what the world thinks of Indians': 'In China, they hate them. In Hong Kong. In Germany. In Italy. In Japan. In Guam. In Singapore. Burma. South Africa. They don't like them. In Guadeloupethey love us there? No.'

The build up of word on word, of country on country and the blank white of the space around the words what better way could there be to describe the desolation of racial prejudice?

Bibliography 2006 The Inheritance of Loss, Hamish Hamilton 1998 Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Faber and Faber Awards 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction, The Inheritance of Loss, shortlist 2007 National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (USA), The Inheritance of Loss 2007 Kiryiama Pacific Rim Book Prize, The Inheritance of Loss, shortlist 2007 British Book Awards Decibel Writer of the Year, The Inheritance of Loss, shortlist 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, The Inheritance of Loss 1998 Betty Trask Award, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

(AP photo)

LONDON: Indian-origin writer Kiran Desai has scooped the 50,000 pound Man Booker Prize with her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss' , a story rich with sadness about globalisation and with joy at the small surviving intimacies of Indian village life. The 35-year-old author, daughter of well-known Indian novelist Anita Desai -- to whom The Inheritance of Loss is dedicated -- is the youngest woman to win the award, eclipsing the works of five other short-listed authors. "I didn't expect to win. I don't have a speech. My mother told me I must wear a sari... A family heirloom, but it's completely transparent," Desai, said, while accepting the award at a ceremony at the Guildhall in London, Tuesday night. After thanking her publisher, editor and agent, the student of creative writing at Columbia University in America added: I'm Indian and so I'm going to thank my parents. "To my mother I owe a debt so profound and so great, that this book feels as much hers as it is does mine. It was written in her company and in her wisdom and kindness in cold winters in her house... One minute isn't enough to convey it," she said, after accepting the prize. It is in sharp contrast to her mother's 40 years of writing experience. The elder Desai has won five different awards and written 14 novels three of which have been nominated for the Booker, the last in 1999. One was turned into the Merchant Ivory film In Custody . Desai came to live in England as a teenager for a year before moving to America. The novel,

which took eight years to write, draws on her experience of leaving India. It is set in the northeastern Himalayas and New York, and is about an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace. It interweaves his story with that of his orphaned teenage granddaughter, his cook and his dog. Desai beat five other authors, including favourite Sarah Waters to win the 50,000-pound award. The other five books which had made it to the shortlist were Kate Grenville's The Secret River , M J Hyland's Carry Me Down , Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men , Edward St Aubyn's Mother's Milk and Sarah Waters's The Night Watch . The Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes in literature which aims to reward the best writing published in Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. It has a prize of 50,000 pounds as well as the 2,500 pounds awarded to each of the six short listed authors.

Revbiew
Book Review: The Inheritance of Loss By Kiran Desai
7 Feb

Reviewed by Kiprop Kimutai Somewhere below the five peaks of Kanchenjunga (a range section of the Himalays mountains), a house stands. Built by a Scotsman when India was colonized, it boasted excellent workmanship earlier on-fancy piping and tubing, good tiling and wrought iron gates. but that was then. Now it is an abode for dead spiders and a scorpions nest, with soot-clumped walls and the pipes all gone shaky and leaking, bandaged with soppy rags.

It houses a retired judge, his grand-daughter Sai, atimid cook and a dog called Mutt. An odd crowd whose lack of any defining common identity adds even more to their misery. For Sai, luck comes in the from of Gyan, an accounting student who comes to serve as her tutor, as her former tutor, a lady called Noni, gets defeated by the complexities of physics and mathematics. Gyan is described to carry an unmistakable whiff of ambition despite his humble background, and the idea of that boy alone in a room with Sai, creates a disquiet in both the judge and the cook. For Sai it is a welcome relief. She has resided in that boring house ever since she was whisked from a Catholic school after her parents (astronauts training in Moscow) perish in a terrible accident and the school, mourning its loss of donor funds (from the deceased) start seeing Sai as a burden, and quickly trace her dwindling relations before finally settling on her grandfather, the judge, to be a guardian. The judge, British-educated like his grandchild is intent that she does not lose her fine accent and English manners and thus sequesters her from anything

undesirable in the enviroment, insisting in tutors and constant observation of her whereabouts from the cook. Love blossoms between Gyan and Sai. At first it is denied, the two concentrating on the sums before them, dissection of angles and analysis of graphs. Still, like an alien creature, love reaches out with desperate tentacles and entangles the two. They Kiss. They fight. They kiss some more. The cook is as poor as poor could be, with nothing but a thin mattress, a tiny collection of old clothes and his culinary skills to his name. Still he dreams of modern amenities-refrigerators, microwaves, telephones-at night he dreams of mobile phones that fly off just before he presses the dialling pad. His sole hope is in his son, Biju, who flew to America some time back and is playing a cat and mouse game to be ahead of the immigration police as he looks for low-end, employee-abusing jobs at fast-food joints. The cook talks a lot and is proud of the judge and Sai, and cooks up fascinating hero-worship stories about working for them. He bears an unusually high level of timidity, that seems ingrained to the very core of his fibre, an eagerness to please and give in, whether he is assaulted by the police or robbers alike. The judge is apparently very cold-hearted, unless to the affections generously shown to his dog Mutt. He hides a lot from his past- a murder, estrangement with family, being bown to a lowlycaste, racial abuse in England where he was educated, and many more bits and pieces of his life that slowly unravel as the story moves on. He is an object of wonderment in the region, a relic whose glory is diminishing with age and whittling resources, but still a pinnacle of achievement to be admired from afar. His desperation and anguish finally spill out at the end, catalysed by the disappearence of his dog ( the latter beingg stolen by a destitute couple to be sold in the next town in exchange for food after they had knocked at the judges door and been refused any help). I have to speak about Biju (the cooks soon), his disillusionment with the American dream, his deplorable living conditions in America. The book describes his journey to America with effortless gracethe eagerness to queue at the American embassy, and the falsification of a story to earn him a visa and the attendant palpitations of his heart as he is unsure of whether his story would be accepted. It describes how he lives like a rat in America, no health insurance when he breaks his arm and having to let it heal by itself, his desperate attempts to make phone calls to his father, and how his dream of making it in America finally dwindles. He buys a ticket to fly back home to India, packing modern fanciful amenities for his further in his suitcase. It is his journey back to their mountain home that gives the story a final cruel twist.

The author: Kiran Desai Overall, the Inheritance of Loss is a literary masterpiece, unputdownable and unquestionable in its flair for description, character scrutiny and human emotion mastery. There is more to it than the story of these four individuals, it speaks of a military insurgency arising, awakening hatred and almost tearing that part of the region from India. It speaks of the attendant anguish-not only to these four people but to their neighbours as well, and how their spirits are put to test-the willingness to accept defeat and move on, and the desire to search for the truth, just like the book describes at the end; The five peaks of Kanchenjunga turned golden with the kind of luminous light that made you feel, if briefly, that truth was apparent. All you needed to do was to reach out and pluck it.

Currently, the best thing about winning the Booker Prize, as Kiran Desai would have it, is that it brought her here to our tiny island in the Indian Ocean. I anticipated my affection for Sri Lanka, she says smiling. As the sun sinks past the horizon, and a dusky twilight cloaks Galle Fort, Kiran and I have what can best be described as a chat; it begins with the promise of ten minutes, and very quickly stretches to twenty, then half an hour. Fame sits very easily on her. So much so, that the youngest female author to ever win the prestigious Booker Prize manages to be the pleasantest of surprises unaffected, sunny tempered and genuinely sweet. Kiran took centre stage when her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss won her the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2006. Predictably, she is something of a heroine in India and is currently

the darling of the literary circuit. The question is is it all in the genes? As the daughter of Anita Desai, Kiran has had much to live up to and at the same time a profound source of inspiration and support to live with. Though the elder Desais flirtation with the Booker Prize was never realized, her daughter won it the first time around. The odds of that of both a parent and child being short listed for the literary worlds most recognized prize are long to say the least. Reflecting on her mothers influences on her writing, Kiran says that Anita Desai was always blunt about the ground realities of writing she would say to me, Never become a writer good advice in a world where isolation, frustration, and pitiful pay are an accepted part of the profession. And for a while it seemed that Kiran would in fact go the other way choosing to study science and attempting a career in ecology. However, when she found herself writing pieces like Cannibalism in the Common House Cricket, she decided to switch. I became a writer because nothing else worked, says Kiran, it was the only time when I was extremely challengedpushed to the extremes of doubt and yet extremely happy. I was incredibly happy working every day Kiran would sit at the kitchen table, writing in bursts, then stopping for a drink or a bite to eat. If I couldnt have been a writer, I would have been a cook, she says smiling, and slender though she may be, it turns out that Kiran loves her food. (So much so that she was embarrassed by how both my books have so much to do with foodIts all cooks and kitchens and restaurants) Kiran obviously enjoyed fiction, and would in fact take writing classes in an attempt to master the art. Ironically, it was only when she opted out, reacting to what she considers the sanitized writing such classes produced, that Kiran found the space for her own approach. Her first book, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, took four years to write, and was recognized with lavish praise by numerous readers and critics. But the book was a fable, a light hearted, lyrical peek into the world of Sampath Chawla who became a holy man the day he climbed into the guava tree and stayed there. The Inheritance of Loss, on the other hand, though no less lyrical, could never be accused of being lighthearted. The Inheritance of Loss is not an easy book to read, (beginning with the title) and though it does boast many instances of humour, many have accused Kiran of being resolutely pessimistic. Interestingly, Kiran herself thinks of the title in particular as being too gloomy, and hates having to tell people what her book is called, admitting it throws a pall over any party. However, when it comes to the book itself, she believes there is a redemption of sorts offered at the end. The book, addresses and struggles with some of the most crucial issues of our time despite being set in the 1980s its relevance to a world still beset by poverty, fundamentalism, terrorism, globalisation and the frictions of multiculturalism and constant immigration is undisputed. How does she manage this? I think its because things just havent changed that much, she says simply. Initially, I thought I would write a much simpler immigration novel, says Kiran, explaining how she intended it to be based on her own experience as an immigrant and how it shaped her identity.

Sometimes it seems that you have to leave, to step away, before you can really understand where you were. When I went to England I had my first realization of what it meant to be Indian. It was a really muddled time, she explains. She like many others adapted to the demands of a new culture. In the writing, however, the book soon stretched to encompass many more stories, exploring the underbelly of immigration, the painful legacy of a humiliating colonial rule and the modern malaise of alienation. Set partly in India and partly in the USA, the book explores what it means to live between East and West and what it means to be an immigrant on many different levels and different perspectives. The Inheritance of Loss was a long time in the writing it took Kiran seven years to write and then another year to publish the book. Deeply immersed in her novel, Kiran found that it defined her life, and as a result, I dont think I can separate my existence from my writing anymore. The result was an intimidating 1,500 pages, which in the end she whittled down to 324. It was such a struggle, she says, describing the process, it was such a monster by then. In the end it was the need for money that actually made her get down to it. With only her advance from her publishers to draw upon, Kiran soon that she was growing poorer all the timeI was living off my family, and they kept begging me to get a job. But Kiran chose to stick to her guns with her mothers support. She went back to Kalimpong in 2001, where a part of the books action takes place. Having last been there when she was 14 years old, she wanted to make sure, while she was still writing her book, that memory and reality didnt diverge too dramatically. Having last seen it through the eyes of a young girl, Kiran found much that was recognizable still. Her descriptions of the fog draping the mountains, the old wooden houses, and the underlying tensions among the people living in them all that makes Kalimpong come alive for the reader bespeak of long familiarity. I wanted to write about a girl growing up there, she reminisces, adding, it was the rainy season, a good time for writing. As a result, the little details chocolate cigars and vibrantly coloured fungus that spring up overnight after the rains find their way in, adding depth and realism to the narrative. The house Choya Oyu, where Sai (a young girl around whom much of the plot revolves) lives with the Judge and their cook, was drawn from Kirans memory of her aunts house. Several characters, including Father Booty and the Judge have been inspired in part by people Kiran actually knew. Today, it is still the people her family in particular who give Kiran roots in a rapidly changing India. Though based in New York, she visits her family every year. But saying goodbye doesnt ever get any easier. Leaving and saying goodbye has an effect that accumulates, she says, I can hardly stand to do it anymore. However, she says that she finds a sense of identity and connection with the Diaspora and that the immigrant community provides her with a strong and constant emotional location. Kiran frequently finds herself writing about the loss of a subject, the gaps in things. Did she find herself working with the Booker Jury in mind? No, she says, explaining that the best reason she had found for writing, is to please herself, besides, if it were fame and fortune she were after, I wouldnt have taken 7 or 8 years, I would have been quicker. Shes remarkably grounded and will be the first to point out that theres talent on every street corner.

Winning the Booker, momentous though it may have been, has changed very little about the way Kiran evaluates herself. After all, what she wants to do is write, and writing doesnt come from being famous or happy, it comes from more difficult placesit comes from doubt, worry and all those more uncomfortable emotions.
Writing Style:The novel is full of stylistic playfulness,touches of comedy,subtlety of logic and nature description.The panorama of the novel is very vast.Desai's use of the omniscient point of view has facilitated the narrative,yet the movements between New York and India sometimes disturb the readers.There is a juxtaposition of place and time.Desai employs stream of consciousness and flashback technique,past is contrasted with present.The local words are used very often.

My Thoughts:When I opened the novel I loved it for the descriptions of daily life in Kalimpong as I was able to clearly picture the surroundings.Even though the plot was heavy and story not as interesting as expected,I continued reading because of the strength of the descriptions of Indian life and human predicament.Without the setting the story would struggle to carry a reader along

Summary:Jemubhai,a retired judge,lives alone with his cook and dog Mutt in an isolated house in Kalimpong,Darjeeling.The arrival of his granddaughter Sai upsets him.Sai is romantically involved with her Math tutor Gyan.In a parallel narrative we are shown the life of Biju,the son of Cook,an illegal immigrant in New york.

Mutt and the maths tutor

Natasha Walter immerses herself in the bleak but compelling world of Kiran Desai's impressive new novel, The Inheritance of Loss

Mutt and the maths tutor

Natasha Walter immerses herself in the bleak but compelling world of Kiran Desai's impressive new novel, The Inheritance of Loss This impressive novel, longlisted for the Man Booker prize, produces a strange effect. It is 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. Everything about it dramatises the fact that although we live in this

mixed-up, messy, globalised world, for many people the dominant response is fear of change, based on a deep desire for security. The Inheritance of Loss is set in the Himalayas, "where India blurred into Bhutan and Sikkim ... it had always been a messy map". A young Indian girl, Sai, lives with her grandfather, a retired judge, in a damp and crumbling house. Sai has started a relationship with her Nepalese maths tutor, Gyan. But, unknown to her, Gyan has become seduced by a group of Nepalese insurgents, some of whom are, as the book opens, marching to Sai's house to steal food, Pond's Cold Cream, Grand Marnier, and her grandfather's old rifles. This incident makes up the first, grim chapter of the book. There is something about Desai's description that touches on humour, and yet it is much too painful to be funny. Even the judge's dog is wrong-footed in the encounter: "Mutt began to do what she always did when she met strangers: she turned a furiously wagging bottom to the intruders and looked around from behind, smiling, conveying both shyness and hope." The judge is so deeply humiliated by having to prepare tea for the intruders that Sai has to pretend not to see what has happened. "Both Sai and the cook had averted their gaze from the judge and his humiliation ... it was an awful thing, the downing of a proud man. He might kill the witness." After setting the scene with a moment of such high drama, Desai shows how the lives of Gyan and Sai and her grandfather, along with their cook and his son, intertwine before and after this horrible turning point. She casts her net wide, and scenes in which the cook's son, Biju, tries to make a life in the US are paralleled by the judge's experience studying in England in the 1940s. In both situations, we see a young Indian man setting off full of idealism about the cultural and material opportunities of the west, only to find himself ground down by the reality of being a second-class citizen. So we hear about the judge as a young man, alienated by the coldness of Cambridge society. "Despite his attempts to hide, he merely emphasised something that unsettled others. For entire days nobody spoke to him at all ... elderly ladies ... moved over when he sat next to them in the bus, so he knew that whatever they had, they were secure in their conviction that it wasn't even remotely as bad as what he had." We hear about the young Biju, working in filthy restaurants for exploitative employers, drifting from job to job, and then "Slipping out and back on the street. It was horrible what happened to Indians abroad and nobody knew but other Indians abroad. It was a dirty little rodent secret." The only time this atmosphere of loss and displacement lifts is in the scenes where Sai begins to fall in love with Gyan. Here, Desai's prose becomes marvellously flexible, sometimes almost too jumpy and uncontrolled, but always pulsing with energy. "Her ears she displayed like items taken from under the counter and put before a discerning customer in one of the town's curio shops, but when he tried to test the depth of her eyes with his, her glance proved too slippery to hold; he picked it up and dropped it, retrieved it, dropped it again until it slid away and hid." Sadly, their love dies when Gyan joins the insurgents and stops coming to see Sai. Sai eventually goes to confront him, but the encounter ends in disappointment. Gyan thinks to himself as she leaves: "Sai was not miraculous; she was an uninspiring person, a reflection of all the contradictions around her."

If we were in the world of Salman Rushdie, then Gyan and Sai would achieve a sensual communion that would stand against all the misunderstandings of ethnic and political and class hatreds. But the point of this novel, constantly brought home to us in small and big ways, is how individuals are always failing to communicate. Desai flicks from a failed telephone call to a failed marriage, a lost dog to lost parents, and the cumulative experience is of atomisation and thwarted yearning. I think this constant sense of disappointment is the reason why, although I admired this novel, I can't say I loved it. It's not surprising that Desai's characters occasionally refer to VS Naipaul, who has something of the same chastened view about the possibility of emotional fulfilment. The only emotional connection that endures is that between the cook and his son, and even this is so uncertain, despite a momentarily hopeful ending, that it hardly lightens the book. Otherwise, we are left with Sai, and her sense, which is also the sensation experienced by the reader, of being battered by overlapping stories that drown out her own desire for the reassurance of love: "Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own tiny happiness and live safely within it." Natasha Walter's The New Feminism is published by Virago.