Product Description

At the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, lives an embittered old judge who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook's son trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from easy. When a Nepalese insurgency threatens Sai's blossoming romance with her handsome tutor they are forced to consider their colliding interests. The judge must revisit his past, his own journey and his role in this grasping world of conflicting desires every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96476 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Review
'A whirlwind of a novel, rich and sad and funny'

About the Author
Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, and was educated in India, England, and the United States. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.

Customer Reviews

super prose, insightful reflections, but lacking in substantive plot
Reading the Inheritance of Loss i had an immediate feeling of deja vu - John Banville's 'the sea', seemed to deal with similar issues of loss, grief, unfulfilment, and fitting in with a strange culture. Both novels share a similar narrative voice, but overall the sea was more affecting.

Kiran Desai creates some beautiful sentences and insightful reflections, such that i found myself reading the same paragraph several times over as i basked in its glory. However, each time she creates an interesting scene, usually regarding Biju's difficulties surviving in America, she concludes the scene early before any really drama can occur. In fact the book is broken into zillions of mini-chapters which for me breaks up the unfolding drama, decreasing its overall effect.

Generally the plot is fairly non-existant. Readers of 'the Sea' or some of ian mcewans work will be familiar with this concept i.e. that the book is an exploration of pop psychology and philosophy and doesn't possess an adrenaline pumping storyline.

Overall i found it very enjoyable mainly because of the prose and its comparison of Hindi and Western culture, albeit superficially.

A disappointment
This is a very disappointing novel. Desai tries hard to make her writing have a political and domestic punch, to create a cast of characters both comic and tragic, to essentially use the template of the English Victorian novel to entertain and educate. Unfortunately, some of the main characters, most notably co-protagonist Sai, fail to engage the reader whilst others like her bitter grandfather and his neighbours are clichéd portrayals. Inheritance is certainly not in the league of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy or any of Rohinton Mistry's extraordinary work such as A Fine Balance or Family Matters. The theme Desai tackles in the novel, the inability to integrate/assimilate into an alien Western world, is tremendously interesting, but only rarely does she produce a scene that addresses this with any depth or originality. The novel is at its best with the story of Biju, living and working illegally in the US; but even though what he goes through as he is preyed upon by avaricious restaurant owners looking for cheap labour is horrific, there's no psychological depth in the narrative voice to emphasis the horror of alienation and express its results. Desai just touches the surface of despair in the stories of Biju in the US and the Sai's grandfather as a university student in England. Although Inheritance is not a short book, it fails to leave the reader with anything other than a superficial brush against the important issues of racism, dislocation, assimilation and post colonialism.

"Mythic battles of past and present, justice and injustice."
Writing with wit and perception, Kiran Desai creates an elegant and thoughtful study of families, the losses each member must confront alone, and the lies each tells to make memories of the past more palatable. Sai Mistry is a young girl whose education at an Indian convent school comes to an end in the mid-1980s, when she is orphaned and sent to live with her grandfather, a judge who does not want her and who offers no solace. Living in a large, decaying house, her grandfather considers himself more British than Indian, far superior to hard-working but poverty-stricken people like his cook, Nandu, whose hopes for a better life for his son are the driving force in his life.

The story of Sai, living in Kalimpong, near India's northeast border with Nepal, alternates with that of Biju, Nandu's son, an illegal immigrant trying to find work and a better life in America. Biju, working in a series of deadend jobs, epitomizes the plight of the illegal immigrant who has no future in his own country and who endures deplorable conditions and semi-servitude working illegally in the US. As Desai explores the aspirations of Sai and Biju, the hopes and expectations of their families, and their disconnections with their roots, she also creates vivid pictures of the friends and relatives who surround them, creating a vibrant picture of a broad cross-section of society and revealing the social and political history of India.

Though Sai's romance, at sixteen, with Gyan, her tutor, provides her with an emotional escape from Kalimpong, it soon becomes complicated by Gyan's involvement with the Gorkha National Liberation Federation, a Nepalese independence movement which quickly becomes bloody. Gyan's commitment to the insurgency offers an ironic contrast with the commitment of his family to the colonial British army in earlier times, just as the judge's hatreds, learned in England, are ironically contrasted with his British affectations in later life.

A careful observer of behavior, with a fine eye for revealing details, Desai brings her narrative and characters to life, illustrating her themes without making moral judgments about her characters-creating neither saints nor villains, just ordinary people leading the best lives they can, using whatever resources are available. Her characters, like people from all cultures, make sacrifices for their children, behave cruelly toward people they love, reject traditional ways of life and old values, rediscover what is important to them, suffer at the hands of faceless government officials, and learn, and grow, and make decisions, sometimes ill-considered, about their lives. Dealing with all levels of society and many different cultures, Desai shows life's humor and brutality, its whimsy and harshness, and its delicate emotions and passionate commitments in a novel that is both beautiful and wise. Mary Whipple