In the mid-1980s, in a decaying house called Cho Oyu below Kanchenjunga, a bitter retired judge lives with his dog, his elderly cook and his teenage granddaughter Sai, sent to him after her parents' death. Sai falls into a tentative romance with Gyan, her Nepali tutor, just as the Gorkhaland insurgency begins to radicalise young men in Kalimpong and the surrounding hills.
In alternating chapters, the cook's son Biju moves from one New York restaurant kitchen to the next as an undocumented worker, sleeping in basements and measuring himself against the America he imagined. Flashbacks show the judge's own youth in Cambridge, where racism taught him to despise his Indianness and, in turn, his wife.
Kiran Desai writes with wry humour and tender detail about colonial hangovers, migration and the humiliations that pass down generations. The novel won the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2006; Desai is the daughter of Anita Desai, three times shortlisted for the same prize.
Book details
| Author | Kiran Desai |
|---|---|
| First published | 2006 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 324 |
| Setting | Kalimpong in the eastern Himalaya and New York, mid-1980s |
| Awards | Booker Prize 2006, National Book Critics Circle Award 2006 |
Themes
- Postcolonial identity
- Migration
- Insurgency
- Humiliation
- Globalisation
Who should read it
Readers interested in the immigrant experience and quiet, ironic family drama set in the Himalayan foothills.