Wanted to write about global loneliness: Kiran Desai on her Booker-shortlisted novel

Indian author Kiran Desai, who is in the running for a second Booker Prize in London on Monday for ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’, said she wanted to write a book about global loneliness that drew on her own “artistic loneliness” as a student in the US.

At a special pre-award ceremony at the Southbank Centre in London on Sunday evening, the 54-year-old author joined the five other shortlisted authors for readings and discussions around the themes of their novels that impressed the judging panel of one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards.

Desai, who won the 50,000-pound prize in 2006 with ‘The Inheritance of Loss’, has been working on this novel ever since and lifted the story of Sonia and Sunny from the reams of her writing over those 19 years.

“I wanted to write a book about global loneliness through the lens of a long, unresolved love story,” said Desai.

“The artistic loneliness came early on, when I was a foreign student leaving India for the first time and beginning to write in college in Vermont,” she said, in response to a question about the long years of isolation involved in writing this novel.

“So perhaps this was the beginning of the book, that combination of being physically alone for the first time, but also experiencing that exquisite artistic loneliness of being alone, no eyes on you, completely unselfconscious… I was very lonely writing the book, but I was also very happy writing this book; it felt like a companion,” she shared.

Weighing in at 667 pages, Desai’s novel has been described by the judges as a “vast and immersive” tale about a pair of young Indians in America. If she wins, the author will become the fifth double winner in the Booker Prize’s 56-year history.

Born and brought up in New Delhi, Desai moved to England with her family at 15 before moving to the US, where she has since lived. She has a family history with the prize, with her mother Anita Desai being shortlisted for the Booker three times.

“An intimate and expansive epic about two people finding a pathway to love and each other. Rich in meditations about class, race and nationhood, this book has it all,” the Booker judges have said of ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’.

Other works fighting it out for the big prize include ‘Flashlight’ by American Korean author Susan Choi, ‘Audition’ by American Japanese writer Katie Kitamura, ‘The Rest of Our Lives’ by British American Ben Markovits, Hungarian British David Szalay’s ‘Flesh’ and English novelist Andrew Miller’s ‘The Land in Winter’.

“The six have, I think, two big things in common. Their authors are in total command of their own store of English, their own rhythm, their own expertise; they have each crafted a novel that no one else could have written,” said Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize 2025 chair of judges.

“And all of the books, in six different and very fresh ways, find their stories in the examination of the individual trying to live with – to love, to seek attention from, to cope with, to understand, to keep at bay, to tolerate, to escape from – other people. In other words, they are all brilliantly written and they are all brilliantly human,” he said.

The winning book for 2025 will be unveiled at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London on Monday night, with the winner bagging 50,000 pounds and all six shortlisted authors receiving 2,500 pounds as well as a specially bound edition of their book.