At the March meeting, we discussed the two books by Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai is the daughter of another highly regarded Indian author, Anita Desai. She was born in 1971 in India, living in the Punjab and Mumbai. She moved with her parents to the USA when she was 14-15. When she received the Booker prize in 2007 for her second book, she became the youngest female writer, at the time, to win the award. She has published no books since her second book.

 Her two novels are:

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998)

The Inheritance of Loss (2006)

For further details, check out:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kiran-Desai

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiran_Desai

Inheritance of Loss is listed in this list of Indian authors who go beyond ‘the spices, colour and cows on the road’:

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/jun/16/10-best-books-novels-set-in-india-indian-writers

She is also included in this anthology:

https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/vintage-book-of-indian-writing-1947-1997-9781409058687

We enjoyed reading her books and there was much to discuss. She writes about many issues relating to being Indian and to living in India, the UK and USA, such as the lives of illegal immigrants in the US, racism, misogyny, civil unrest, colonialism and post-colonialism, sin and forgiveness, class and status in India, bribery, extortion, corruption and theft, first love and other forms of love, and landslides in hills. The story is set in Kalimpong in the state of West Bengal, amid the Darjeeling Hills at the time in the 1980s, when the Nepalese Gorhka people living in the area were demanding for a separate state administered by them to protect their culture, language and lands. However, we found the characters to be underdeveloped compared to the issues. We recommend her books.