An Amazing Book

I've just finished reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai - my next book discussion pick. It was the 2006 Booker prize winner, so I guess that says something about the quality, but I was truly amazed by the understanding that a young writer could bring to a work of fiction. Perhaps it is because the author is speaking largely from her own experience of having lived in two worlds - the worlds of the East (India) and the West (England and the United States). Desai was born in India in 1971; her mother is Anita Desai, a well-known author; Kiran was educated and lives in the U.S. Of the themes of The Inheritance of Loss she says:


The Inheritance of Loss is set partly in India and partly in the USA. Desai describes it as a book that "tries to capture what it means to live between East and West and what it means to be an immigrant," and goes on to say that it also explores at a deeper level, "what happens when a Western element is introduced into a country that is not of the West" - which happened during the British colonial days in India, and is happening again "with India's new relationship with the States." Her third aim was to write about, "What happens when you take people from a poor country and place them in a wealthy one. How does the imbalance between these two worlds change a person's thinking and feeling? How do these changes manifest themselves in a personal sphere, a political sphere, over time?"

I think she captured these themes superbly.