Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, and educated in India, England and the United States. She is the daughter of Anita Desai, and now travels between the three countries, and says she feels 'no alienation or dislocation'. She spent four years writing her first novel, and says it is not at all autobiographical. An excerpt was featured in the New Yorker India Fiction issue, and in Mirrorwork, Salman Rushdie's controversial anthology of 50 years of Indian writing. She is currently a student in Columbia University's creative writing course.

Bibliography

The Inheritance of Loss
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge's cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are claimed by his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. When an Indian-Nepali insurgency in the mountains interrupts Sai's exploration of the many incarnations and facets of a romance with her Nepali tutor, and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they are forced to consider their colliding interests.

In a generous vision, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, Desai presents the human quandaries facing a panoply of characters. This majestic novel of a busy, grasping time -- every moment holding out the possibility of hope or betrayal -- illuminates the consequences of colonialism and global conflicts of religion, race, and nationality. Sawnet Review by Champa Bilwakesh

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
Faber and Faber, London. 1998.