Kiran Desai’s surname was familiar to the world of literature when her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. Her mother, Anita Desai, was already an accomplished novelist, who had been nominated for the Booker three times. The Inheritance of Loss was hailed as a defining example of both the postcolonial novel and the realist novel of the Indian diaspora: Indians living elsewhere, around the world.
The wait for her next novel – currently shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize – has been nearly 20 years. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a globetrotting love story between two Indian-Americans, Sonia and Sunny. Sonia’s darkly disturbing relationship with Ilan, a modernist artist with devilish predatory powers, sets the context for the rest of the novel. Ilan’s narcissistic and oedipal leanings shadow Sonia and Sunny’s own search for love.
