The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Published by Allen Lane Hamish Hamilton in 2006

In the north-eastern Himalayas, at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga, in a crumbling isolated house, there lives a cantankerous old judge, who wants nothing more than to retire in peace when his orphaned grand-daughter Sai arrives on his doorstep. The judge's chatty cook watches over her, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, moving from one New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS, forced to consider his country's place in the world. When a Nepalese insurgency threatens Sai's blossoming romance with her handsome tutor and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they are forced to consider their colliding interests. The nation fights itself. The cook witnesses the hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge must revisit his past, his own journey and his role in this grasping world of conflicting desires - every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal.

The Inheritance of Loss was the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2006.

‘Although it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, 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. Despite being set in the mid-1980's, it seems the best kind of post-9/11 novel.’ Pankaj Mishra - The New York Times

‘It is a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness’ Hermione Lee

Kiran Desai was born in India and was educated in India, England and the United States. She is the daughter of Anita Desai, a three-time Booker Prize nominee.

By the same author
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

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