The Inheritance of Loss

One of the most beautifully authentic books I've ever read, Desai's THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS is also one of the grimmest. It reminds me very much of a luscious nightmare, one which you awake from remembering not stories or events, but a strange, unshakable tone or hue. You couldn't say, upon waking, what has you so disturbed, but you can say that it is heartbreaking -- even distressing -- in the way of all truly gorgeous things. Desai has not written a story here. Not at all. Instead, she has shaped and colored four perfect lights. One light shines on Jemubhai Patel, a retired Indian judge steeped in a borrowed British heritage, his closest friend a dog named Mutt. Another light illuminates Sai, Patel's granddaughter, an orphaned transplant from the muddy half-world that exists at the borders between culture and indoctrination. The final two lights spread the hem of their glow around the judge's twitchy, superstitious cook, and Biju, the cook's son, now scrabbling through the grimy microcosm that (just barely) houses America's lowest working class. These lights have fuzzy edges, and where they overlap, the colors are almost indescribable. The connections between these four people aren't quite so remarkable as the way they are described. The novel's larger themes -- colonialism, cultural disaffection, the clockwork precision of tyranny, unrest, and rebellion -- are treated with a plain-faced simplicity, Desai's real talents aimed more at the individuals who must learn how to deal with the sometimes invisible ripples of politics and passion. Chapter Twenty-Eight begins, "The judge was thinking of his hate." For many, this will be a novel of hate, a book of tiresome gloom, and I won't say that's not true on more than one level. Life (and literature even more so) is about, if anything, conflict and entropy. The second law of thermodynamics just as easily applies to hearts and souls as it does to kinetic energy, and Desai's book deals with all of those things with a prose that is both dark and crystalline. Because Desai is more concerned with a tableau than with a plot, because her lights illuminate a stage and not a story, many might find the book to be a gorgeous but meandering mess. And with "stories" of this type, it's difficult to find an ending that is anything but abortive. It took Desai seven years to write this novel, and that's just as evident in her fluid narrative technique as it is in her denoument. Like a child releasing a helium-filled balloon, this novel doesn't so much end as just drift away. A fittingly torturous finale to a book of so much hubris and humanity, it may not be as satisfying as the rest of the book, but it is at least as touching, and certainly as brilliant.

This novel is set in a relatively isolated village in India, with characters ranging from poor to upper middle class. A secondary setting is Manhattan where undocumented immigrants work in squalor and try to survive. The picture of life in India is one I had never seen, and the picture of the impact of British rule is far from complimentary. Character development, plot and historical context are all quite strong, leading to a bittersweet ending. I thought this work was a little drawn out toward the conclusion, which is the only reason for 4 rather than 5 stars.

Mirage Book Club reviews The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai The author Kiran Desai, a 35-year-old Indian-English writer, was brought up in a literary environment: her mother, Anita, a three-times Booker nominee, was born in Delhi to a German mother and a Bengali father and grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English at school and in the city, but she writes only in English--Anita's first book, Cry, the Peacock was published in England in 1963, and her better known novels include In Custody (1984) and Baumgartner's Bombay (1988). Anita left India to teach for years at Mount Holyoke and MIT and now spends most of the year outside of India. Indeed, the selection of The Inheritance of Loss as the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2006 didn't surprise the Anita, Kiran Desai's mother, but she was so anxious about the final prize announcements that she traveled to a small village in India where she heard of her daughter's ascend to the finalists and then winning the award. Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi in 1971 and went to St. Joseph's Convent in Kalimpong, India till the age of 14 when her family moved to England and a year later to Massachusetts, where Kiran Desai completed her schooling. She studied at Bennington College, VT and Hollins University, VA and received her MFA from Columbia University, where she took two years off to write her first book, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. She is a citizen of India but lives permanently as a legal green card holder in the United States. The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai's second novel was published in 2006. It is set in mid-1980's India, at the time of the Nepalese movement for an independent state. Jemubhai Popatlal, a retired, Cambridge-educated judge, lives in Kalimpong, at the foot of the Himalayas, with his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook, Pitaji whose name is only revealed on the penultimate page of the novel. The novel ends tragically when Biju, the cook's son, returns to the village bereft of pride and belongings after a pointless and painful attempt to establish a life in the U.S. The other characters in this novel fare no better; everybody loses: a heartbroken Sai loses Gyan, her math teacher and romantic interest, to the Nepalese independence movement; the isolated Judge loses his treasured guns; the cook loses any hopes of witnessing his son's success in America. The author describes India's caste system, village life, the Nepalese border region and the political upheavals more vividly than any other Indian-English writer save Salman Rushdie. She demonstrates exceptional ability to handle the style of magical realism and develops a highly literate description. Sentence structure, vocabulary, and phraseology are lyrically and superbly crafted. Her mastery of these technical elements probably was good enough to convince critics and referees to award numerous accolades to the author. Where Desai fails in this book is when she attempts to construct characters, especially when she describes illegal aliens in the United States. Desai's inability to create a realistic life for Biju in New York is both tragic and inexcusable. Living in America more than half her life should have enabled her to decipher the lives of people like Biju, many of whom rise from the basements, obtain legal status and acquire either decent education or a business. She should know it's illegal in the U.S. to ask for visa status in public schools! Biju's story is improbable from the start when he obtains his initial visitor's visa so easily: "He dusted himself off, presenting himself with the exquisite manners of a cat. I'm civilized, sir, ready for the U.S." But when we visit him again in a basement in Harlem, he is a different character, passive and inept. "He had one bag with him and his mattress," and in the new place, "The rats of his earlier jobs had not forsaken [him] . . . one chewed [his] hair at night." Unlike many strong-minded, hardworking, adventurous legal or illegal immigrants who build a new life in the U.S., Biju makes no serious attempt to untangle the web of desolation surrounding him. His fate is astounding, considering that the number of Indians with small businesses exceeds that of any other minority in the U.S., e.g., the Patels own the largest chain of motels in the United States. But Gyan who is Biju's second shadow in India and faces a different set of issues but fares no better. The author suffers from post 9/11 syndrome; she is heavily influenced by the recent international trend to downgrade the Western or American life-style and its values. Desai's magic realism is a distorted personal imagination of Biju's life in America and later upon return to India. It is astonishing that a novel with such disappointing character development, defective storyline, and excessive rhetorical structures can win a prestigious award. It must be assumed that she won the Man Booker Prize because her superb writing style and beauty of sentences totally mask the novel's narrative flaws. Mo H. Saidi, MD Member, The Authors Guild

I certainly can understand the 2 and 3 starred reviews concerning this ponderous novel. But it is in a word; brilliant. The themes of globalization, alienation and an understated humiliation felt by people in less "developed" nations forms the backbone of this rather brave and difficult novel. The descriptions of places and times is exquiste and detailed. The characters are complex and deeply wounded individuals trying to come to terms with a world that is moving at a pace that is too fast for us to maintain our roots or identity. Although the events in the book take place in the mid 1980's I can't help but think it should rank up there with one of the best post 9/11 ruminations on our new reality. There is not alot of hope and redemption offered by the writer althought the rather ambiguous ending is open ended enough to allow for a variety of alternatives. Approach this book with patience and great insight. It is not an easy read nor a easy road to follow but it is an essential read for those interested in our cultural relationships, global change and the cost it has on societies and individuals. Great writing by a very intelligent writer.

Bellissimo

Ein absoluter Liebingsroman.

Kiran Desai’s second novel won a number of awards, including the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the 2007 National Book Critics Fiction Award. It was written over a period of seven years after her first book, the critically acclaimed 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard' and if anything is even more brilliant. Its main themes are migration, living between two worlds, and between past and present. The major theme running throughout is one closely related to the effects of post-colonialism: the loss of identity and the way it travels through generations as a sense of loss. Individuals within the text show snobbery at those who embody the Indian way of life and vice versa, with characters displaying anger at the English Indians who have lost their traditions. Enjoyable from start-to-finish, but possibly does not have sufficient depth to benefit from being read again.

The Inheritance of Loss is a beautifully crafted, melancholic novel that explores displacement, identity and the quiet fractures left by colonial history. Kiran Desai moves gracefully between the mist-covered slopes of Kalimpong and the harsh realities of immigrant life in New York, revealing how personal dreams collide with political tensions. Her prose is lyrical yet sharp, and her characters—lonely, proud, hopeful, wounded—feel achingly real. Desai’s great achievement is her ability to show how loss can echo across continents and generations, shaping lives in ways both subtle and devastating. It’s a novel that lingers, not because it offers comfort, but because it tells the truth with extraordinary tenderness.

Edición y entrega perfecta, pero la novela promete más de lo que da