Kiran Desai: I never thought it would happen in the US'

"Not long after the novelist Kiran Desai published her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker prize in 2006, she began working on her third. The title, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, came to her quickly, and she knew she wanted to write a modern-day romance that wasn't necessarily romantic, one as much concerned with the forces that keep us apart class, race, nationality, family history as those that bind us."

"One neighbour who observed how Desai would rise early each morning to write, eat her breakfast and lunch at her desk, take a short break to do her food shop or housework and then write until as late as she could manage in the evenings attempted an intervention. You need to come out of your house, he told her. You will go crazy writing a book! This is no way to live!"

Kiran Desai began The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny soon after publishing The Inheritance of Loss, aiming for a modern-day romance focused on forces that separate as much as unite people: class, race, nationality and family history. Writing the novel took nearly two decades and resulted in almost 700 pages. The prolonged process involved daily, rigorous writing routines and produced approximately 5,000 pages of notes. Neighbours and relatives expressed concern about the solitary schedule and physical decline, even attempting an intervention. The project required repeated revision, selection among many narrative strands, and significant temporal and familial scope decisions.

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