Name: The Inheritance of Loss
Rating: 3.615384615384615 (39 reviews)
ISBN: 9780802142818

Kiran Desai

In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, but their world--and Sai's romance with her handsome Nepali tutor--is threatened by a Nepalese insurgency. By the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

The Inheritance of Loss

Stand in for “the loneliness of Sonia and sunny”. Maybe best book I’ve read this year.

Sarah Erle

Arihant Verma

When I was 50 pages in, I questioned myself as to why the three man booker prize winners I had read had the thing they had in common, there, i.e like this sentence itself, their ability to stretch the visions and meanings of the things they want to convey, in long sentences, which, in the end, calls for either a very very slow re-read or a warning to read the next pages with the slowest reading speed possible. Perhaps, it is just me who feels like it. 

I was amazed at ability of the clarity of the conversion of words to convert scenes into real pictures in the mind, I was my director of the camera, and unlike other readings there were colours in the motion picture of the mind, while reading. Kiran's ability to put sarcasm and use it to pique the interest of the line, is tremendous. It felt almost like a free flow in the story lines, apart from the occasional pre planned processes of who unfolds in what scene and where. I like this kind of unfolding, seems more organic. And the fact that the story was set in the first half of 20th century's Northeast India was aided by that organism.

There were many instances, when I felt I should leave the book, because it was becoming tiresome and cumbersome to read anymore, the story was stretching. But as I started with the fourth half of the book, the intricacies of judge, his past, how he had treated his wife, how he treated his cook, how Lola and Noni were as they always had been, Biju's struggle to home, it kinda all fell into place with the last 5 pages of the book. Language wise, I learnt a lot from Kiran's writing, it was my first book of her. 

It's a good read. I would have given the book 3 stars, but I gave four because I learnt a lot from how she wrote, linguistically speaking : The choice of words, the structure of the sentences, and a lot more.

Arianna M

The writing is beautiful, captivating, rich. The characters feel real, and not all of them in pleasant ways; as for the places described, Desai transports you right to where the characters are.
There’s tragedy here, yet not so much tragedy to make this feel like made-up torture porn: it’s believable, it’s the opposite of justice, but then again the worst character in the novel was a judge his whole life. What justice might there be in a world like this?

At the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered old judge who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. With the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, and his cook's son hopscotching from one New York restaurant to another, trying to stay ahead of the US immigration services, this is far from easy.

Sarah Escorsa

I finally gathered all my courage to read this book! I have to say that the tiny print (probably the smallest I've ever seen!) and the fact that a friend mentioned this book was a pessimistic read didn't make it very appealing;) Well, it is very well-written and I enjoyed some of the reflections conveyed by the author but what the book lacks is a significant plot. I thought it was dull, hard going and I really had to push myself to finish it.

The Inheritance of Loss is Kiran Desai's extraordinary Man Booker Prize winning novel. High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time. The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his past. His orphan granddaughter has fallen in love with her handsome tutor, despite their different backgrounds and ideals. The cook's heart is with his son, who is working in a New York restaurant, mingling with an underclass from all over the globe as he seeks somewhere to call home. Around the house swirl the forces of revolution and change. Civil unrest is making itself felt, stirring up inner conflicts as powerful as those dividing the community, pitting the past against the present, nationalism against love, a small place against the troubles of a big world. 'A Magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and political acuteness' Hermione Lee, chair of the Man Booker Prize judges 'Poised, elegant and assured . . . breaks out into extraordinary beauty' The Times 'Desai's bold, original voice, and her ability to deal in a grand narratives with a deft comic touch that affectionately recalls some of the masters of Indian fiction, makes hers a novel to reread and remembered' Independent

The Inheritance of Loss

Reviews

Highlights