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   Summary and Book Reviews

The Inheritance of Loss: Summary and book reviews of The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, plus links to an excerpt from The Inheritance of Loss and a biography of Kiran Desai.

The Inheritance of Loss The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai
Hardcover: Jan 2006,
336 pages.
Paperback: Aug 2006,
384 pages.

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Critics' Opinion:   good
Readers' Rating:  Three Stars
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Book Summary
award image Man Booker Prize, 2006
award image National Book Critics Circle Award, 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.

In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace, then his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep.

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).

Book Reviews


Poor  Library Journal
She fails to get readers to connect and identify with the characters, much less care for them. The story lines don't run together smoothly, and the switching between character narratives is very abrupt.

Very Good  Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This stunning second novel ... alternately comical and contemplative ...Desai deftly shuttles between first and third world.

Very Good  Booklist - Donna Seaman
Starred Review. In her second novel, Desai is even more perceptive and bewitching....Desai 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.

Good  The Washington Post - Donna Rifkind
Her keen appreciation of contradiction enriches the book, and, if the integrity of her narrative is less than perfect, the integrity of her ideological convictions is absolute.

Very Good  New Yorker
Briskly paced and sumptuously written, the novel ponders questions of nationhood, modernity, and class, in ways both moving and revelatory.

Very Good  The New York Times - Pankaj Mishra
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.

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