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The Inheritance of Loss Hardcover – 31 Aug. 2006
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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
Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, was educated in India, England and the United States, and now lives in New York. She is the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which was published to unanimous acclaim in over twenty-two countries, and The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Man Book Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHamish Hamilton
- Publication date31 Aug. 2006
- Dimensions15.7 x 3 x 24.1 cm
- ISBN-100241143489
- ISBN-13978-0241143483
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- Publisher : Hamish Hamilton; First Edition (31 Aug. 2006)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0241143489
- ISBN-13 : 978-0241143483
- Dimensions : 15.7 x 3 x 24.1 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 663,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 7,480 in Women's Literary Fiction (Books)
- 61,034 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 66,829 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)
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I concede that it is a little flawed in structure and style, however I found the writing to be astonishingly lucid, humorous and insightful. The novel is built from a series of vignettes, some of which read almost as discrete short stories, some of which are as short as a couple of sentences. This approach is effective in portraying impactful images of setting and experience, and in supporting the theme of historical incoherence, where events develop almost of their own accord, nudged along by the naive and ignorant actions of people.
Elsewhere the themes of displacement, the complexity of distance, nostalgia, alienation from self and others, inauthenticity, foreign-ness, self-consciousness and human weakness across the generations are all played out under the shadow of Kanchenjunga mountain, the ultimate representation of truth and authenticity.
Desai throws us into the alienation experience of her characters by peppering her prose with unfamiliar Indian words. With the exception of Sai, Gyan and Biju, she identifies key characters either by their occupation or their nickname, in order to emphasise the mask of persona and lack of authentic will in each. Much more is made of the judge's affection for his pet dog Mutt than of the story of young love between Sai and Gyan, though in the end, youthful truth, love, wisdom and honesty provide precarious glimmers of hope and redemption.
The political buzzwords that appear on the dust jacket of this book don't really do it justice at all. This is a powerful and lyrically presented account of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the personal and the universal, and how one is so frequently and tragically ignorant of the other.
McEwan's Amsterdam is probably the worst of the lapses, but Desai's novel also disappoints. In isolation the problems are small, but their cumulative effect is to undermine the book substantially: a weak main character, Sai; a highly improbable 'radicalisation' of her boyfriend (especially disappointing as this was an opportunity to give the book an obvious contemporary relevance); a rather unlikely 'Hollywood' ending (did Desai have an eye on film rights?) that makes you wonder what happened subsequently when the father's disappointment hit home; and worst of all an author's voice which doesn't have the confidence to allow the characters and the story to make its political points, without intervening to labour them irritatingly to the reader.
To me the book read like an early and immature work from a highly promising author - which in effect it is. Desai's 'technical' skills are exemplary and I read many paragraphs over and over to enjoy her wonderful phrasing. She also conjures atmosphere of place brilliantly. But the Booker judges were really half-asleep to let these positives outweight the significant flaws in the book. A good read, maybe. A great read, absolutely not.