“The Inheritance of Loss”
by Kiran Desai
Published: January 2006
ISBN: 9780143055686

(Updated: March 27, 2007.)

From the Publisher…

In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are claimed by his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. When an Indian–Nepali insurgency in the mountains interrupts Sai’s exploration of the many incarnations and facets of a romance with her Nepali tutor, and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they are forced to consider their colliding interests.

In a generous vision, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, Desai presents the human quandaries facing a panoply of characters. This majestic novel of a busy, grasping time—every moment holding out the possibility of hope or betrayal—illuminates the consequences of colonialism and global conflicts of religion, race, and nationalism.

If John Steinbeck were, today, a woman in his 30’s, born in India and living in the US, he might well be Kiran Desai. I write that given the amazing descriptions, the type of descriptions, the poetry of the descriptions found in this book. Absolutely beautiful. And definitely transposed to Desai’s form.

I have never had any “Steinbeck” flashes with any other author. It is a view, a point of view that is rare. It is a different-from-the-norm “wisdom”. And, have I mentioned the sheer beauty of it all? Those moments when a sentence in a paragraph, just lying there, makes me wonder how on earth such a beautiful gem can just sort of be lying there…

The story is heart-wrenching and “is” and can only come from someone who has been in all of these places. On the flap of the book, with respect to Desai, it says that she lives between India and the US. Maybe it’s my own experience with a similar thing that makes me beg to differ. She is in both. And both are in her. And this makes the perspective one that is actually more common — I imagine — that many of us imagine or feel, even though the details are not the same.

And as with Steinbeck’s writing, humanity — that state of being human amongst others doing/being the same — is the subject of this book. And the beautiful details — humanity is only ever in the details it seems — makes it so.

I highly recommend this book and give it a four out of five hearts on my scale.