The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

The Inheritance of Loss is Kiran Desai’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel. Set high in the Himalayas, it centres on a dilapidated mansion and three lives shaped by longing, memory and uncertainty.

The household is led by a judge, broken by a world he finds too messy for justice and haunted by his past. His orphaned granddaughter falls in love with her tutor, despite the differences in their backgrounds and ideals. In the kitchen, the cook’s thoughts are with his son, who works in a New York restaurant, mixing with an underclass drawn from across the globe while searching for somewhere to call home.

Synopsis

As the characters’ private hopes unfold, the wider world presses in. Forces of revolution and change gather around the house, and civil unrest begins to make itself felt.

The resulting tensions stir inner conflicts as powerful as those dividing the community, setting past against present, nationalism against love, and the concerns of a small place against the troubles of a larger world.