Biography

Kiran Desai is the author of three novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which received a Betty Trask award, The Inheritance of Loss, which received the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of the New York Times top five fiction books of 2025. Her work has been translated into over 35 languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, and a Columbia University Medal of Excellence.

Project Summary

At I Tatti, Desai will begin work on a new novel. She is interested in how the conversations in living rooms change during times of rising nationalism and authoritarianism, how the mind changes, and when the heart. What happens when fear is injected into a society? How does a syncretic society unravel? How do relationships alter between those who are part of the minority and those who are part of the majority? She is considering narratives set in Europe, India, and the States, in what will be a wayward and personal story.