Slowly but surely a new book is born
Kiran Desai: Inspiration from a meticulously kept diary and observation. Pix by Eshan Fernando
After her Booker Prize-winning book, Inheritance of Loss was published in 2006, Kiran Desai seemed to have gone quiet. Unpublished for nearly two decades she will now be releasing The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny in September 2025.
“I have been working very intensely for a very long time,” said Kiran of her extended period of quiet, “it was a tremendous gift to be able to do that. It was a very conscious decision that requires a lot of sacrifice – to dismiss real life for so long.”
Now living in New York, Kiran was in Sri Lanka to attend the HSBC Ceylon Literary & Arts Festival that is now on (January 17-19) at the Public Library. This is her second visit to the country. In a soft voice, poised and thoughtful, she discussed her craft and her love of literature in an interview soon after the Festival opened on Friday.
Kiran’s inspiration for her stories comes from keeping a meticulous diary and insisting on an immense amount of observation – of landscapes, people, and places. “All my experiences travelling and reading have been put into this book,” she said. She then reads extensively to inform her writing and detail her characters and conflicts. Lately she has been drawn to Ernest Hemingway in an attempt to understand the American “exaltation of war.”
In preparation for her book and indeed, simply out of worry she has also been reading non-fiction and journalism from India to understand the troubling nationalistic turn the country has taken.
Kiran did not shy away from politics when she wrote Inheritance of Loss, set during the Gorkha insurgency of the 1980s. She certainly doesn’t plan on shying away from it now either. She believes that only art can truly tell the story of politics. Only art, she says, can convey the emotions and reality of political trauma. And indeed, of living a normal life through such experiences. Speaking on the rising Hindu nationalism in India, she finds herself particularly interested in the question of when the hatred begins, and “how a heart changes.” Only literature, she believes, can truly grapple with that.
She does just that with her new book. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a love story, following an “endlessly unresolved romance between two modern Indians.” Through her book she explores the “loneliness of divisions,” those of class, of rural and urban lives, and of nations. Set in a globalised world her characters constantly meet only to part again. But it is not the globalised context of their world that gives her characters a universality. It is the depth with which she explores their specific lives. No matter the country or the context, “everyone is the same in the hands of a skilled writer,” says Kiran with a slight smile, “the ironic thing is that the more specific you get with a character, the closer you are to telling a universal experience.”
But literature is not only to provoke and to relate. It is also to remember. For her, landscapes have always been incredibly important. She glows as she shares her experience of travelling in Sri Lanka, thrilled that the rural landscapes appear to be still the same as when she first visited in 2007. But she pauses and asks me if indeed things have not changed, eager to hear about how climate change is eroding our coastlines and destroying our agriculture. “The thing is when landscapes change you lose the memories that are associated with those places. That’s a natural part of life, however, a novel works to preserve those memories.”
Kiran believes that readers now demand too much of books, expecting literature to always be so gripping, “strong enough to dismiss the shallow attraction of a life lived on social media.” The literature that becomes popular is often fast paced, constantly moving and never slowly. She has resisted this urge.
Deliberately taking her time, she let herself fully immerse in her work. The long time she took writing her book should give readers an idea about how to read it. A lengthy book, it promises to be a deep, thorough dive into its characters and the new world we live in today.
Kiran is pleased to hear that many Sri Lankan students have read her mother’s book Village by the Sea as part of their O’Level syllabus. Her mother Anita Desai is now 87 years old but still writing, her most recent novel titled Rosarita published just last year.
Searching for an ideal partner? Find your soul mate on Hitad.lk, Sri Lanka's favourite marriage proposals page. With Hitad.lk matrimonial advertisements you have access to thousands of ads from potential suitors who are looking for someone just like you.