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The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2006 Selected as one of Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year 2006 Selected as one of The New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year Selected as an ALA Notable Book of the Year 2006 Finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction 2006 Short-listed for the Orange Prize 2007 Long-listed for the 2008 Dublin Impac Award A Book Sense Selection ISBN: 0-8021-4281-8 / ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4281-8 US $14.00 - 5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 384 pp - Sep. 2006 |
Published to extraordinary acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. She illuminates the pain of exile and the ambiguities of postcolonialism with a tapestry of colorful characters: an embittered old judge; Sai, his sixteen-year-old orphaned granddaughter; a chatty cook; and the cook’s son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one miserable New York restaurant to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS.
When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai’s new-sprung romance with her handsome tutor, their lives descend into chaos. The cook witnesses India’s hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge revisits his past and his role in Sai and Biju’s intertwining lives. A story of depth and emotion, hilarity and imagination, The Inheritance of Loss tells “of love, longing, futility, and loss that is Desai’s true territory” (O: The Oprah Magazine).