The readers have to be attentive to the plot or will lose the flow of the storyline. The pace is fairly fast and Kiran draws on the different characters’ stories, sometimes going back in time and then bringing the readers back to the present day of the novel. Her individualistic style sometimes makes it difficult for readers to engage with the characters and the readers need to concentrate or lose track of characters and events and in the end, the plot itself. Then she constantly introduces minor characters. Kiran chooses not to formally introduce her characters to the readers but instead weaves them into her flashbacks. He experiences the negative aspects of life as an illegal migrant in New York. The lives of these four main characters are intertwined with the story of the cook’s son, Biju. To add to the intricacies of the novel, the revolution threatens the blossoming relationship between 16-year-old Sai and her Nepalese tutor, Gyan. Jemubhai becomes vulnerable because of his penchant for hunting rifles, the one sport he indulges in. The peaceful fabric of their lives is disturbed when a Nepalese insurgency disturbs the region. The novel focuses on the lives of Jemubhai Popatial, a retired Cambridge-educated judge living in Kalimpong, his orphaned granddaughter, Sai who moves to live with him and his cook. The story is set in the mid-1980s in a Himalayan town in India by the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga and New York. It took Kiran seven years to complete her award-winning novel and she used her own personal experiences of an Indian living in the United States to write her novel. Kiran is the daughter of Anita Desai who had been nominated for the Booker prize but did not bag the prize. The 2006 Booker Prize “The Inheritance of Loss” is Kiran Desai’s second novel.

The inheritance of loss novel