Kiran Desai, the celebrated novelist and recent Booker Prize winner, has lived in New York for more than a quarter century. She was born and raised in Delhi, the youngest of four children. This history propelled her on an artistic journey that would help forge her literary voice while further exploring concepts of identity and belonging. Desai’s annual trips to India ceased in 2008 following her father’s death, marking a profound change in her relationship with her homeland.
From an early age, Desai’s literary journey took off. She went with her mother, who got a fellowship at Cambridge, to the UK. This experience helped her to expand her horizons. It brought her to Bennington College in Vermont, where she experienced her first creative writing class. It was during this period that Desai wrote her first short story, “Hair Oil.” In it, she examined a guy’s fatal fixation on his locks. This first attempt at writing would prove to be only the genesis of a much longer, yet still evolving, career.
For decades though, Desai honed her craft in isolation. She wrote from her home in New York as well as during frequent trips to Mexico, where she reconnected with family members. Her passion for her work was even more off-the-charts than her commitment. So bad that even her 90-year-old uncle quipped that she had started to look like “a sort of hobo.” Despite this, her commitment yielded significant results. Her new book, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny [Amazon | Bookshop], earned her a second appearance on that longlist for Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize. This comes nine years after her other major success in 2006, when she won the Booker for her novel The Inheritance of Loss.
This, along with her writing, are tightly connected to Desai’s own immigrant experience. She points to V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival as most useful in figuring this part of her life out. The intersectionality of identity and the experience of belonging versus not belonging are issues she continues to wrestle with in her art. “I didn’t think of myself as a person, particularly. I didn’t think of myself as being from somewhere,” Desai shared, reflecting on her formative years.
Her creative process is as rigorous as it can be consuming. By about 2013, her notebooks for “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” had grown to a staggering 5,000 pages. The resulting final manuscript carries out to nearly 700 pages with her exemplary mastery of informing the reader’s knowledge of dense plot lines and character progression.
Desai’s outsider’s eye towards education has influenced her work as well. She compared the American educational system to that of India, stating, “I have to say that in comparison to India the American system of education seemed so unbelievably easy.” This juxtaposition has influenced her style of storytelling and character building.
Each author’s skillful combination of self-reflection and detailed storytelling captivated reader’s imaginations. And I really feel that I paid that tender, she said, suggesting the almost inextricable link between her life and her art. Alienation and belonging are themes that recur in all aspects of her work. That openness makes it possible for readers from all kinds of backgrounds to find something familiar and relatable in her stories.
Her mother’s influence on her steps toward the writing life is impossible to overstate. Desai regards her as her first reader, someone who understands the landscape from which she writes: “My mother knows the landscape I’m working from – she understands what I am trying to do.” This family tie enriches Desai’s work, giving her a welcome reservoir of support and understanding.
Desai is equally honest about the emotional toll that writing is often going to take on an artist. “If you are a good artist … you give more of your life to art, you begin to subtract your life so it becomes such an emptiness that you dare not look upon it,” she reflected, recognizing the delicate balance between life and art.
First, Desai’s literary prowess is profoundly evident. Her fierce willfulness and proud combative spirit in the act of creating completely bring her character to life. “I become very determined and very stubborn and not very nice if I am kept away from my writing,” she admitted. This intense commitment reflects her passion for this work.
Kiran Desai explores issues of identity and culture and belonging through her novels. As a result, she has emerged as one of the strongest literary voices for our current moment. Her path from Delhi to New York reflects the complex hurdles that many immigrants, whether documented or not, face in this country. These experiences deeply inform their personal stories.