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The Inheritance of Loss
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The Inheritance of Loss
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The Inheritance of Loss
Audiobook12 hours

The Inheritance of Loss

Written by Kiran Desai

Narrated by Meera Simhan

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge's cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are often on his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. Kiran Desai's brilliant novel, published to huge acclaim, is a story of joy and despair. Her characters face numerous choices that majestically illuminate the consequences of colonialism as it collides with the modern world.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 19, 2007
ISBN9781429586665

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Rating: 3.7032967032967035 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    From Books in Canada:"The oxymoron, “Boast of Quietness”, is the title of a poem by Borges, and serves as an epigraph to Kiran Desai’s equally paradoxical novel, The Inheritance of Loss, winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize. The silent burst of Borges’s title prepares the reader for his opening line: “Writings of light assault the darkness,” for the blind poet contrasts his humanity with that of the multitude, even as he differentiates his own hermetic world from Whitman’s openness. In contrast to Whitman’s opening line in “Song of the Open Road”-“Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road”-Borges ends his “Boast” with “I walk slowly, like one who comes from afar, so he doesn’t expect to arrive.” Kiran Desai incorporates both poets in The Inheritance of Loss, as she explores the “open road” in a global context that combines America and India during the Nepalese border conflicts of 1986. “My name is someone and anyone,” writes Borges; Desai’s seventeen-year-old protagonist, Sai Mistry, takes part of her name from Desai and part from Rohinton Mistry, but she also partakes of the “sigh” of love and fatalism, as well as the mist and mystery that dominate the atmosphere of Kanchenjunga, the mountainous border region between India and Nepal, where much of the novel is set. Desai’s opening paragraph hints at the Sublime: “All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapour, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at its summit.” Desai observes a fine balance in these sentences, as well as in the overall structure of her novel, divided between this remote retreat in the Himalayas and the bustle of New York. Constantly oscillating between inner and outer, upper and lower, she brings the Sublime down to earth.Just as the “inheritance of loss” works through an affirmation of negatives, so her descriptions of the mountains combine substantial and ethereal elements-like photographs developed through their negatives. With plume in hand, Desai paints light and darkness, height and depth in her poetic prose. The vastness of the first paragraph gives way to a domestic scene: “Sai, sitting on the veranda, was reading an article about giant squid in an old National Geographic.” In her seeming isolation, Sai reaches out to the larger world through her global magazine, where the giant squid extends its tentacles towards Kanchenjunga’s “wizard phosphorescence” - two macro-cosmic creatures in a surreal cosmos.Meanwhile, to complete the domestic scene, Sais grandfather, the judge, sits in a corner playing chess, his dog Mutt under his chair, and the cook tries to light a fire in the “cavernous kitchen” with kindling where scorpions nest. Smoke from the kitchen mingles with the mist outside, obscuring everything; even the diagram of the giant squid coalesces with the murky vapours. Waiting for her mathematics tutor, Gyan, whom she loves, Sai contemplates the giant squid’s solitude and melancholy. “Could fulfilment ever be felt as deeply as loss?” She decides that love resides in the lack, not the contentment-hence the inheritance of loss for Sai and other characters in this novel, who have been orphaned in one way or another.The giant squid, National Geographic, and the omnipresent mist transcend this isolated region, rising towards universals: “They sipped and ate, all of existence passed over by non-existence, the gate leading nowhere, and they watched the tea spill copious ribbons of vapour, watched their breath join the mist slowly twisting and turning, twisting and turning.”That twisting and turning applies not only to the Dickensian fog transported to the former British colony, but also to an “Inflatable Globe” that Sai receives as a gift from National Geographic. Desai recreates the twists and turns of fate and history, for the open road closes when a gang of young Indian-Nepalese insurgents ransack the judge’s house. In contrast to National Geographic’s order, this territory was always part of “a messy map...despite, ah, despite the mist charging down like a dragon, dissolving, undoing, making ridiculous the drawing of borders.” (The Dickensian note is unmistakable.) The open road continually narrows: optimistic frontiers turn to post-colonial doubts and diasporic labyrinths.With a vision of romantic adventure, a Scotsman had built the judge’s house, but in reality it was built by the back-breaking work of Indian porters, “faces being bent slowly to look always at the ground-up to this site chosen for a view that could raise the human heart to spiritual heights.” Post-colonialism levels the earlier sense of the sublime, as Desai resigns herself to a fatalism that plagues India: “It was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed.”On the other side of the globe, the cook’s son, Biju, tries to find his way in America in a number of fast-food joints. Displaced in the Diaspora, Biju cannot participate in Whitman’s light-hearted song; in a world where all roads are dead ends, he can merely join Borges, “like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.” Desai’s “boast of quietness” extends to Biju’s father back in India: “A poverty stricken man growing into an ancient in fast-forward. Compressed childhood, lingering old age.” With such compression and compassion, Desai captures an entire life, and that life can be multiplied a million times over. Down and out, Biju lives in a basement at the bottom of Harlem. “Biju joined a shifting population of men camping out near the fuse box, behind the boiler, in the cubby holes,” as far removed from the heights of Kalimpong as possible. By the end of the novel, Biju returns to his father, who has been stripped of his few possessions, a mere figure in a nightgown, a phantom against the mountainous backdrop.If America represents a contemporary escape route for Indians abroad, England may be seen as the more traditional haven for the educated classes seeking opportunity in the larger world. The judge’s training at Cambridge includes forms of discrimination. His two neighbours, Lola and Noni, also Anglophiles, fill their bookshelves with Jane Austen’s novels and eat jam “By appointment to Her Majesty the queen.” The jam’s coat of arms, supported by a crowned lion and a unicorn contrasts with the spiders, scorpions, and snakes in the vicinity. Their domestic scene further highlights the imperial invasion of the remote mountainous zone, for Desai literally sees through the colonial enterprise with exact irony: “Their washing line sagged under a load of Marks and Spenser panties, and through large leg portholes, they were favoured with views of Kanchenjunga collared by cloud.” These sisters praise England’s cosmopolitan society where chicken tikka masala has overtaken fish and chips as the national dish.By the end of the novel Sai again contemplates her world of National Geographic: “Of the judge’s journey, of the cook’s journey, of Biju’s. Of the globe turning on its axis.” Such a long journey is circular, as it spirals downward from mountains to characters downtrodden by fate and history. The open road narrows and closes in The Inheritance of Loss, but as the daughter of Anita Desai, Kiran has inherited considerable gains in the world of fiction."
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    So distracted by frequent "lyrical" narrative, that ultimately I lost interest in the story.

    After ~ 50 pages, I moved on to another book. Life is too short and the world has too many books worth reading from cover to cover...
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The blurb on this book said

    "If book reviews just cut to the chase, this one would simply read: This is a terrific novel! Read it!"
    -- Ann Harleman, The Boston Globe



    Well. How can I say no to that? I bought it, and tried to read it until the first half. It's full of eccentric characters, which I usually like, but this time I just couldn't get into it. I'm pretty sure that if I just persevered enough I would find something good in it, but life is too short. I'll have to read it from the start again if I want to appreciate it, though who knows when I'll be in the mood to stray into its pages again.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While I really liked this book, and while it having been at the top of the national bestsellers list suggests otherwise, I should mention that I don't think this book is for everyone. The writing is slow to reveal the story, and the reader must actively engage him/herself with the story because it is not otherwise an engaging read. I do think that this is a wonderful novel for someone willing to bring their own self to the table for examination during the read, but there are parts of the book that may cause one to squirm at the image in the mirror that it holds.

    That said, this book (as I find to be true with most Booker Prize-Winners) has great potential to get a reader to think: to relate to characters as people who develop throughout a story rather than flatly act as a novel's hero or heroine and analogous foil, and to challenge preconceived notions about what should or should not be happening. I was constantly "changing sides" while reading this book, as were some of the characters in it, and in the end - while something is definitely said about human connections and the painful, beautiful challenges that are 'inherited' from any position within (or even exiled from) society - I've been left to piece together for myself any moral conclusions that might be drawn from the truths set forth by the author.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked Kiran Desai's beautifully-written "The Inheritance of Loss" right from the start. In addition to the almost lyrical quality of the writing, its setting in the Himalayan border between India and Nepal is an area of the world I'm particularly interested in reading about. The novel centers on two people -- Sai, an Indian girl who grew up in a convent before moving to her grandfather's house. The other half of the book centers on Biju, a boy who has immigrated to the United States and who is the son of a cook. The book really showcases the divide between generations and the difficulty of immigrants in forging a cultural identity as they are all torn between different values. Although I thought the book dragged a bit in the middle (most of the interesting plot developments are at the very beginning of the book or at the very end...) the writing really carried me through those parts. All and all I did enjoy this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book does for India’s mountainous North-East what “The God of Small Things” did for the South, which is to bring its people and culture to life with stunning prose. I once thought there was a finite number of ways something could be described, but having read this author it’s clear the world’s stocks of descriptive artistry are secure for a while yet.What came across was a picture of the many faces of India, the gulf between rich and poor, the many social and cultural groups, and the many injustices. And of course the influence of the West, embraced by some, resented by many. The sections are brief, which can be a help as it was sometimes hard to follow the dense prose, and I suspect I would need a few more readings to get the full meaning. Happily this is the sort of book that could stand re-reading, revealing new ideas each time.What there wasn’t much of was plot. Most of it was confined to the first fifty pages and the last fifty pages. The middle bit was a mixture of back-story and atmosphere. There were bits of magic and humour in these middle sections (I particularly liked the bit where the bakery was raided by public health officials) but I found myself wanting to read faster in order to get on with the plot. The difficulty was that writing like this demands to be read slowly because every word sparkles. It will not tolerate interruption, and I found I could only read it in total silence with no distractions whatsoever. To polish off the last hundred pages I practically had to lock myself in my room. I think to enjoy this properly you have to be prepared for it to take as long as it takes and to just enjoy the journey.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book has some spectacular writing, pithy but terse sarcasm, along with some impressive insights into human nature. There was a disconnect between the characters but that seemed the point. If you loose contact with your family or country, your relationships with others suffer.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The setting was the best feature of this novel, set in a town in northeastern India in the 80's. There is a Nepali nationalist movement which causes increased turmoil in the area as the lives of a retired Indian civil servant, his orphaned granddaughter, their cook with a son struggling in America, a young accountant who tutors then romances the granddaughter. The novel also focuses on the struggles of the cook's son in America; he has certainly not reached the promised land as he works long hours in low-paid restaurant jobs. Even though this book had well-detailed characters, interesting settings and musical language, it all failed to gel for me and I struggled to finish it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There are some beautifully written passages describing the settings. I enjoyed most reading about the village, the house and forest. The characters are interesting but not developed or connected enough.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I was very interested to read this book, and was not disappointed by the opening, which seemed very promising, about a brutal assault and robbery of a retiree living a secluded life in the mountains and jungle of northern India. Unfortunately, the story does not bind together, and falls apart into uninteresting, loose strands. I lost track, and interest, and was glad I had the book behind me.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The story line is so thin. What is it with the judge and the dog? Is it a story worth the Booker Prize?But I really did love some of the metaphors she uses. The story is simple and she keeps the narrative on one level only.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic writing, memorable characters, and a gripping combination of plots! It is no wonder that Desai won multiple awards for this novel The story is set in the Indian Himalayas and in New York City. It is the tale of the battle for identity in a new culture, in an old culture, and in a culture containing both. It is about the simplicity of life and love and its complexity. This is the story, as noted on the flyleaf, of big and small. Identity of self and country, love of a dog, betrayal to a lover, betrayer of a culture, hiding from truths and lies, and disillusionment everywhere. I know, sounds depressing, and thank goodness the author injects a wonderful wit to break it up. However, I will remember Sai, the Judge, Biju, Lola and Noni, Father Booty and many others for a long time. This is the type of powerful novel I thoroughly enjoy reading because it challenges my life assumptions about meaning.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It took a few starts, but my God what a wonderful book. And a wonderful writer. I want to go back and re-read it, but slowly now, with a pencil and notebook, to note the inspiring passages. Like getting out the cutlery to enjoy a feast!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The story is set in the in the town of Kalimpong in Northeast India, close to the Nepal border. Here lives a retired English educated judge in a decaying house with his cook and dog, Mutt. He is soon to be joined by his orphaned granddaughter, Sai. Living in this far away town, the three live a tightly knit life. Sai is cut off from the world, except from the occasional distractions of two Anglophile sisters that live down the road and her young Nepalese tutor with whom she engages in a brief crush. The talkative cook, Sai’s main companion, has his hopes and dreams focused on his son Biju who has been granted an American Visa and has travelled to New York in search of the “American Dream”.The book tries to portray the cultural differences in society and provides a bitter sweet picture of how an immigrant must struggle to survive working illegal jobs at an Indian restaurant where the old class system still prevails, the French upstairs, the Indians downstairs. The writer dissects the dream of empire, old and new, and lays bare the idea of colonial modernity. It shows, without judgment, what happens to those who leave for a new life and yet find themselves outcasts both at home and abroad. It is a novel that manages to be both warm-hearted about human nature and clear-sighted about humanity's flaws. While reading The Inheritanc of Loss I thought that the story is mainly about solitude, and how the different characters in the story face this “isolation” througout the book.I thourougly enjoyed this book which deals with various themes, immigration, dislocation, multiculturism, ethnic differences and solitude combined with running themes such as food, language, nationalism and attitudes to colonialism supported by a beautiful poetic prose.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Intriguing Story. In my opinion, this book was an intriguing and interesting story. I always enjoy reading a book that not only relates a great story but also gives me an education. With this book it was the insight into India's way of life, customs and culture. Kiran Desai, detailed India's social order, and vividly described the living conditions and way life of the people living in the countryside. I could not help myself from being touched by the characters in the story, especially Biju life in New York. From Kalimpong to New York City, the author created these characters with such realism that when tragedy struck, I felt their pain.Overall, I thought that this was very interesting story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A masterpiece of a book - rich in its complexity, yet beautiful in the way it's woven. A slowly winding path that gives you a glance into the sleepy yet vibrant world of some very wonderful characters. This book will make you ache for family and loved ones, and stir your heart in unexpected ways!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai is in a tiny village at the foot of one of the Himalayan mountains. Living in a crumbling house there is a retired judge and his live-in cook. The judge is basically unhappy with the entire world and everyone and everything in it, except for his little dog Mutt.One day his orphaned granddaughter arrives and he's forced to take her in though he pays her little mind. Sai, is watched over by the cook and educated by various tutors in the village, eventually falling in love with one of them. The cook does his job distractedly as his thoughts are almost entirely consumed by those of his only son, Biju, who he'd sent to America in search of a better life. Biju is living in New York and jumping from one crappy job to another trying to stay one step ahead of the INS in his search for the all important green card which he remarks "wasn't even green".As the story progresses, each character grows more and more embittered with life in general. The cook is consumed with worry for his son. Biju grows disillusioned with life in America, crappy jobs, apartments full of immigrants, and a life that is nothing like he'd imagined. Sai and her tutor, Gyan, are in the first stages of love when an Indian-Nepali insurgency takes place in their village and threatens to pull them apart. Gyan is Nepali and sucked into the insurgency and is stuck between his heritage and his Indian love and begins to pull away from her as life for everyone in the village begins to crumble.Overall, I thought the book was just...meh. I have no strong feelings one way or another. It wasn't awful but it wasn't fantastic either. It's not a book that I will pick up again but it wasn't a complete waste of 2 days. It's basically a book about shitty things happening to a varied group of people. However, I never really grew to care about any of the characters so I didn't much care when anything happened to them. I remained completely emotionally unattached. Sure, there were moments of "Oh, well that sucks" but nothing that struck a cord in me or really made me feel anything. Maybe, the deeper message went over my head but I just didn't get what is so great about it. There wasn't much resolution and the story ends a little abruptly but I didn't really care by that point. So, it wasn't an awful book or anything, just a little story that left me with no real lasting impression.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found myself really caring about the characters, how they were going, what would happen to them. Very insightful and interesting portrayal of life in India and the culture and surroundings of this area in the foothills of the Himalayas in particular. A really good read..
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Inheritance of Loss is an interesting novel, set during the insurrection of the Gorkha National Liberation Front in Sikkim (an Indian province between Nepal and Bhutan) in the 1980s. Its originality lies in following the life of various characters, linked by family ties but otherwise living their own personal drama: the Judge, a retired member Indian Civil Service, bitterly recalls his life desperately trying to "modernize" his country after the British had left, his granddaughter Sai watches her world coming apart and her first love being shattered by the insurrection, while the Judge's cook's son Biju discovers that the riches of America are hard to come by for a young illegal immigrant...All in all, it makes for a powerful tale of human miseries, but I personally regret that by intertwining several stories, the author chose not to dive into more details in any one of the characters' life. And it was a bit too depressing for my taste.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Inheritance of Loss is a brilliant novel, incredibly well crafted, tactile - you can almost smell and taste what she is writing - with unusual and believable environments and characters. Its only real drawback is that it is a tad TOO unusual, a bit like a Japanese movie you respect but don't get attached to because it is hard to have empathy with everything you read. The three main characters are brilliantly painted. The judge without hope, with the saddest life in the history of literature. The cook and 17-year old Saj are characters we get attached to and who render some sense of hope for the reader and make us believe that loss does not have to be inherited. The novel is highly recommended particularily if you want to learn more about fascinating India and of Indians, but also if you want to read a book to be put down in awe of the author's language and of her great storytelling skills.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Great historical fiction set in Kalimpong, India in the 1980s; I need more background knowledge of the area and the GNLF to fully understand everything in the book but the characters were intriguing and the descriptions engaging. Beautifully written but depressing nonetheless; I need to read a story with a happy ending next.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After hearing lots of disappointed buzz about this book, I set it aside for several weeks. Then, as the author reading approached, I picked it back up. I ended up liking it less than I’d initially hoped, but better than the buzz had indicated I might. The ending was perfect, one of the best endings I’ve ever read. And I’m so glad I went to the author reading in Houston. Both Desai and her mother, author Anita Desai, read from their works and then discussed their books. Both authors came across as lovely people and it’s always nice to hear and meet lovely authors.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I ENJOYED THIS BOOK, MAYBE IT MOVED A LITTLE SLOWLY AT TIMES, BUT IT GIVES AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT LIFE IN NORTHERN INDIA DURING A SPECIFIC TIME OF POLITICAL UPHEAVEL THERE, AS WELL AS THE LIFE AND STRUGGLES OF INDIAN EX-PATS IN USA. SOME STUNNING DESCRIPTIONS ADD TO THIS BOOK'S ENJOYMENT. CHARACTERS ARE ALSO WELL-DRAWN AND ROUNDED. WE FOLLOW SEVERAL CHARACTERS THROUGHOUT THE STORY AS THEIR STORIES WIND AND INTERTWINE THROUGH TIME AND CIRCUMSTANCES. A WELL-HANDLED PLOT MANAGES TO SMOOTHLY SWITCH FROM PRESENT TO PAST IN A DEFT WAY AND WITH EASE. I THOUGHT THAT IN ONE OR TWO PLACES THE WRITING SEEMED CONTRIVED (USUALLY WHEN DESCRIBING SOMETHING IN A CLEVER WAY) BUT THESE WERE RARE AND BRIEF HALTS IN AN OTHERWISE WONDERFUL STORY FULL OF DESCRIPTIONS THAT STUNNED WITH THEIR APTNESS. ON THE WHOLE, THE WRITING WAS BRILLIANT AND IN PLACES QUITE BREATHTAKING. EXCELLENT READ. WELL WORTH THE PRIZE OF MAN BOOKER 2006.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An powerful and engaging read, 'The Inheritance of Loss' shows a household stretched and torn by the world; poverty, work, the cast system, politics, immigration, family, marriage and relationships are all joined in the web that traps the characters. Yet it is such a well written and believable novel that all of this is nothing more than everyday life. This is a great post-colonial story, and well worth reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really didn't enjoy this book - but I can't rate it too low; it is very well written. The novel is well-paced, the characters are engaging, human (sometimes they do what you hope and many times not). It explores some huge issues - cyclical violence and colonialism in India, the impact and sources of emigration - through the eyes of the human beings involved, and does so in a compelling way. I think that the reason I was so disappointed in it is that, often, on a human scale, there is both happiness and sadness, gain and loss - and plenty of surprises. Desai's novel (perhaps I should have been forewarned by the title?) sees only one half of the equation. Any good that is noticed in the book is destroyed or taken away by the end - relationships are all damaged or destroyed, security and safety are gone, savings stolen, wordly goods, pets, lovers - all these are torn apart and stomped to bits by the last page. Living during the Gurkha uprising would have been damaging on a huge scale - no denying this. Fear would be rampant, security nonexistent, and the worst of human behavior would come forth. And yet - life is rarely unmitigated bad acts and loss. Even in the worst of times, for some people, some good things happen. I'm no Pollyanna - and I've read other books about these topics (Gosh, Mukherjee, Mistry - even Naipaul, though he's not really part of this crowd) that show plenty of loss, strain and damage. But in these, there is also some good in life. I put this book down and could feel nothing other than depressed.Still, it's very well wrought and easy to read. I'd be hard pressed to say, "don't read it." Just - read it when you have the wherewithal to deal with unmitigated cynicism.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This postcolonial read really drags you into the conflict between what one's nationality and sense of culture was before the colonizer, and after. Who are you when you enter another country, especially if you hold no status in that country. Nothing I say here could really do it justice, so I have to say that in terms of a cultural discussion on what happens to one's identity after being colonized, this is one of the best. (See my blog--One Literature Nut--for a full review.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Group portrait of the futility of both defiance and resignation by weak characters in a powerful turmoil. Modestly pensioned outsiders -- Gujaratis and other Indians and an elderly Swiss priest -- have been enjoying the privileges affordable only because of their neighbors' poverty in Nepali country around Darjeeling, and are baffled and overwhelmed by the wild boys in the violent 1986 rising of the Ghorka National Liberation Front. Retired judge Jamu Patel, furious against himself and thus the world because of his own timidity, is especially odious, fascinating and dismayingly believable, a weak man so deeply colonized psychologically that he hates his own dark skin-color and anything that reminds him of his Indianness, having scorned his parents and abused his wife and now his long-time cook, and not daring to show any generosity toward his orphaned teen-age granddaughter Sai. The most carefully portrayed characters include the judge's long-suffering (and unnamed) cook, whose greatest devotion is to his son Biju, and Biju himself struggling -- futilely -- to gather savings as an illegal immigrant kitchen worker in cheap New York restaurants; Gyan, Sai's young Nepalese tutor and suitor, who betrays her under pressure from his young Nepalese buddies and then tries to persuade himself that his cowardly actions were really heroic, Uncle Potty the well-read alcoholic and his Swiss priest chum, and a couple of sweet, ineffectual Indian ladies who would much rather be British. In the end, all these characters lose property and/or pride, and only the loving relationship of the cook and his son give a glimpse of better possibilities. Winner, Man Booker Prize, 2006.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely brilliant. For all those who have been in India and have also been treated as unwelcomed immigrants in the US (even being just students or tourists), it's extremely recommended. It's real as life.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I just finished The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and it was well worth the read. The book takes place in India at the foot of the Himalayas in the mid 1980's, and it exposes the startling contrast between the daily lives of a post colonial people and the expectations that in the USA or England a better life awaits. Kiran Desai paints a picture that is both painful to read, yet worth the comprehension. This Booker Prize winning novel awesome!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book is set in the Himalayas in a dilapidated magazine, which is hope to three different people. Scattered around them is a community which is facing an upheaval as political unrest spreads through the locale. The house is owned by the judge, English-educated and retired from the judiciary. His orphaned granddaughter shares his home and is dealing with her first infatuation. The last member of the household is the cook, whose ambitions are tied up in the fortunes of his son, who is working a menial job in America.I found the first part of the book to be quite slow. In fact it's nealrly glacial enough in it's pace to make you give up. However, perserverance is rewarded, to some degree at least. Desai raises interesting questions around the notion of national identity. Anglophile Indians who live comfortable isolated lives suddenly face nationalistic pride.I did like this book, but I do wonder as to it's Booker Prize credentials. It is a good story, once you stick with it. It deals with a changing India, as well as relating some poignant individual stories. I would like to belive that it accurately portrays a life in India. A sense of decay and loss permeates the whole book. However, I just don't think that it's a great book.