{"id":103492,"date":"2025-10-05T01:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T01:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/103492\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T01:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T01:25:12","slug":"fame-is-a-kind-of-hell-i-have-seen-the-dark-side-of-this-culture-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/103492\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fame is a kind of hell. I have seen the dark side of this culture\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kiran Desai was getting ready for a photo shoot and couldn\u2019t decide what to wear. For the Indian-American novelist, the dilemma was fraught because of the cultural symbolism involved. \u201cShould I wear my kurta because the photographer is coming? Or my dress? In the end I wore my kurta, but I took off my pyjamas and wore my kurta like a dress.\u201d Over a video call from her home in the Jackson Heights neighbourhood of Queens in New York<\/a>, Desai laughs at her makeshift solution. \u201cThat\u2019s the absurdity that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

The choice of a hybrid look \u2013 western and Indian \u2013 offers a portrait in miniature of what the 54-year-old has been doing for most of her working life: striving to present her authentic self as a writer who inhabits an in-between space, belonging to two countries and neither. Desai was just 14 when she moved first to England and then to the United States<\/a> with her mother, and fellow novelist, Anita Desai. She studied creative writing at Bennington College in Vermont. She felt homesick for her father and family back in India<\/a>. She assimilated over time. And she channelled her energies into fiction. <\/p>\n

Desai became a roaring success. When her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published, in 1998, Salman Rushdie<\/a> declared himself a fan. In 2006, at 35, Desai won the Booker Prize<\/a> for her novel The Inheritance of Loss, making her the youngest author to ever do so. (Eleanor Catton would beat her record in 2013<\/a>.) Her mother had been nominated for the Booker three times; Kiran\u2019s nomination was the first time a mother and daughter had both got the Booker Prize nod. <\/p>\n

And then, for almost 20 years, there was nothing, just artistic silence and a hope from publishers of what might come.<\/p>\n

Now Desai is back with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, which has also been shortlisted for the Booker Prize<\/a>. A kaleidoscopic epic, the novel tackles family dynamics, multiculturalism, postcolonialism and immigration. A deeply rewarding, quotable and surprisingly energising read, it is enormous: 688 pages in its published form.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big book, but it was so much bigger at one point,\u201d Desai says. \u201cIt was thousands of pages, and I whittled it down. I felt as if I was just swimming in the novel, trying to see where it was coming alive, trying to see which strands I would use.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the novel, Desai tracks the journey of Sonia and Sunny, who leave their home place in India to fashion lives for themselves in the US. Fated to meet by their meddling, matchmaking families, both struggle in their adopted lands. The novel poses questions to which they don\u2019t know the answer. Are US live-your-dream-style values better than community-valorising Indian ideals? Does embracing western ways necessitate shunning your old life? Can you simply shrug off your previous self, like a salamander stepping out of its skin?<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration can be a process of creating an unknowable creature of oneself,\u201d Desai says, noting that in India there\u2019s a sense that it\u2019s a privilege to take those journeys: it\u2019s the preserve of the wealthy. \u201cIn that landscape, all the children are brought up to leave,\u201d Desai says. \u201cThere is enormous heartbreak involved in these journeys, and yet it almost seems inevitable. I remember my father saying to his friends, \u2018What we have done in our lives is [to have] brought up perfect foreigners.\u2019 I remember him saying to me, \u2018Don\u2019t be emotional when the time comes. Take the opportunity, because life is going to be easier for you.\u2019 But when it actually happened, and I returned to India to go to the US consulate to get my final citizenship papers, he was very upset and emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n

If emigration has brought tremendous pain, it has also given Desai her greatest subject. \u201cIt\u2019s a fantastic place to write from, this place of the in-between,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was the thing that terrified me: that I wouldn\u2019t have a subject. I felt that I\u2019d lost India but would never be able to write about the United States. I didn\u2019t have the historical knowledge. My grandparents didn\u2019t come from here. But then I learned it is possible to write from this diaspora. And it may not have a firm geographical location, but it does have a very defined emotional location.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KiranKiran Desai at home in New York in August 2025. Photograph: Meghan Marin\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

Skin colour dictates so much in the book, even as Desai\u2019s characters endeavour to leave racial stereotypes behind. Sunny is in a relationship with Ulla, an American. \u201cHe realises he\u2019s very proud to be with a white woman, and yet he is so ashamed of his pride,\u201d Desai says. \u201cNobody would ever speak about this. There\u2019s a desire towards whiteness. At the same time, he knows he resents Ulla, the way he is resented in India because he comes from a privileged class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shame and confusion are hallmarks of Sunny\u2019s assimilation into the US. Sunny, the narrator tells us, was \u201cunsure whether he was playing a part, taking his cues from the people, the weather, the food, even the objects around him.\u201d When he is introduced to Ulla\u2019s family, no one can relax. Their differences are glaring, even as everyone pretends to ignore them. \u201cThat is the place of writing,\u201d Desai says. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about emotions no one would ever say.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Author Arundhati Roy: \u2018We are actually swimming in a sewer of moral rot\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Living in Trump\u2019s United States, Desai can see how racism has surged in recent years, affecting people in their day-to-day lives. \u201cIn this country, with Trump, there\u2019s a huge swing against what they call diversity and an enormous anger against immigrants and migration,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

In Ireland, too, I tell her: there has been a terrible surge in racist attacks on the Indian community. \u201cIt\u2019s happening everywhere,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is also a huge problem in India. India is also a country which receives immigrants and people who are fleeing across the border, and the racism against them is unbelievable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cruel and awful. When you think of refugees from the Rohingya Muslims coming to India, it\u2019s just shocking. I think we have to open up the discussions across borders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desai is acutely conscious that she operates like a literary magpie for her novels, taking real-life stories \u2013 of pain, subjugation and dislocation \u2013 and spinning them into prose. Sometimes she has qualms about the ethics of it. <\/p>\n

\n

I think often fame is something that is made, not something that happens<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Kiran Desai<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cYou are using the family story, albeit altered and fictionalised. My grandfather was a judge. He was not the character in The Inheritance of Loss, my last book, exactly, but the journey was his journey. I remember my father saying \u2013 and I can speak about him because he\u2019s gone \u2013 he would say, \u2018I feel as if I\u2019m losing my own identity with a mother and daughter who are writing.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople feel they\u2019re being subtracted. Yet as an artist you eat it all up. You\u2019re living your life in order to write a book. You\u2019re living your life to know certain emotions so you can use them in your art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiran is extremely close to her mother, who is 88 and lives in the village of Cold Spring, an hour and a half up the Hudson River from New York City. \u201cShe\u2019s not well and I\u2019m quite worried because my book is coming out, so I have to travel and do things.\u201d <\/p>\n

Stress is etched on her face as she speaks. Desai lives alone; her mother is her mentor and her inspiration \u2013 when she won the Booker Prize, she said the win was as much her mother\u2019s as her own. She is in awe of how she managed to produce her work against the traditions of the time. The daughter of a German mother and Bengali father, Anita Desai, who was raised in Delhi, was, Kiran says, \u201cnot part of any artistic or literary circle\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was married with four children by the time she was 35,\u201d Desai adds. \u201cShe read so much Virginia Woolf, all the diaries, and perhaps she was learning how to become a writer by reading them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KiranKiran Desai is back with a new novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Photograph: M Sharkey <\/p>\n

When Anita moved from Delhi to England with Kiran, her youngest daughter, separating from her husband, she was already in her 40s. Then they moved to the US so Anita could teach writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Decision after decision was made by Anita, plunging them into new worlds: exciting ones, but discombobulating too. <\/p>\n

Kiran by contrast leads an intentionally quiet life. Being celebrated as a public figure, like a Rushdie or a T\u00f3ib\u00edn, is not for her. <\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the hell of fame,\u201d she says of her Booker win, when the spotlight was turned in her direction. \u201cI actually think it\u2019s a kind of hell. I have seen the dark side of this culture of fame. There\u2019s a sort of darkness in becoming famous \u2013 the old line that you make a pact with the devil in order to become famous, which can be quite true.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think often fame is something that is made, not something that happens. It\u2019s a choice to appear for an interview every single day or to show up for these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pact Desai is willing to endure for a time for her 20-years-in-the-making novel. Does she care what readers will think of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny? <\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I do,\u201d she says, with a laugh. \u201cI do care what people think and I try not to care what people think. A book gets all kinds of reactions and you have to centre yourself in your work and move on. I\u2019m envious of writers who write many books more frequently. They can move on quickly. If you\u2019ve taken 20 years, it does feel like a lot more rests on it. It\u2019s more scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps scariest of all is letting go. There are repercussions to a life like Desai\u2019s. Writing is her comfort, her manuscript her joy. Handing it over to her publisher was hard; being without it is anxiety-inducing. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Booker Prize 2025: Kiran Desai among shortlisted authorsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I have lived a solitary life for the last very many years, I\u2019ve used that solitude to write and writing gives me enormous pleasure,\u201d she says. \u201cI will not go out in the evenings. I would see people once or twice a week. It\u2019s a choice. I realise other writers don\u2019t feel the need to do this. They are able to live lives and write books.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing out of writing the book, I feel a bit disconcerted when I look at my life now that I\u2019m not writing all day. Now that I\u2019m leading an ordinary life again, it\u2019s very strange. I don\u2019t know what to do with myself, that\u2019s the truth of the matter, because I worked so hard for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise to hear that Desai is already forging plans for a new novel. \u201cAll I want to do is disappear back into another book,\u201d she says wistfully. \u201cAnd vanish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai is published by Hamish Hamilton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kiran Desai was getting ready for a photo shoot and couldn\u2019t decide what to wear. For the Indian-American…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18196,18,117,19,387,17,968,41159,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-103492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-booker-prize","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-india","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-salman-rushdie","16":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}