Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss

The Inheritance of Loss

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The Inheritance of Loss Author Kiran Desai Country India Language English Genre(s) Novel Publisher Hamish Hamilton Publication date 31 August 2006 Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Pages 336 hardback edition); 357 p. (paperback edition) ISBN ISBN 0-241-14348-9 (hardback) & ISBN 0-8021-4281-8 (paperback) The Inheritance of Loss is the second novel by Indian author Kiran Desai. It was first published in 2006 and won the Man Booker Prize for that year as well as the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 2007.[1]
It was written over a period of seven years after her first book, the critically acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.[2][3] Among its main themes are migration and living between two worlds and between past and present.
Set in the 1980s, the book tells the story of Jemubhai Popatlal Patel, a judge living out a disenchanted retirement in Kalimpong, a hill station in the Himalayan foothills, and his relationship with his granddaughter Sai. The novel also depicts the insurgency in the Himalayas by the Gorkhali people fighting for their own identity and its impact on the wider population. Another focus of the novel is the life of Biju, the son of Mr. Patel's cook; an illegal immigrant making his way in New York.
In November 2006, it was reported that the inhabitants of Kalimpong were angered by what were allegedly negative stereotypes of Indian Nepalese people in the novel.[4]

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