{"id":284446,"date":"2025-10-07T17:43:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T17:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/284446\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T17:43:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T17:43:21","slug":"read-kiran-desais-2025-book-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/284446\/","title":{"rendered":"Read Kiran Desai\u2019s 2025 Book Recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com\u2019s books column<\/a>, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you\u2019re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you\u2019re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.<\/p>\n

Nearly 20 years after her book The Inheritance of Loss was published, Kiran Desai is finally back with her third novel: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny<\/a>, which has already been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. \u201cI wanted to write an aching story about how modernity affects our spiritual beings in the elemental matters of love and loneliness,\u201d she says, \u201cone that I could put on the shelf alongside the books I love, like Anna Karenina<\/a>, The Unbearable Lightness of Being<\/a>, and Love in the Time of Cholera<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

Desai\u2019s first novel, the award-winning Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard<\/a>, was published before she finished her MFA at Columbia University. Eight years later, she released The Inheritance of Loss<\/a>, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Booker. Desai was 35 at the time, making her the youngest woman to win the Booker, and her late father\u2014who had read every previous Booker winner\u2014accurately predicted<\/a> she would. She wrote some of Inheritance at the Hudson Valley house of her novelist mother, Anita Desai<\/a>, a three-time Booker nominee herself.<\/p>\n

The bestselling author\u2014born in Chandigarh, India, raised in New Delhi, and now based in Jackson Heights, New York\u2014earned her literature degree from Bennington College (where she thought she\u2019d be a scientist<\/a>) and her master\u2019s in English from Hollins University; was first published in The New Yorker<\/a> at 26, when her writing also appeared in Mirrorwork<\/a>, an anthology of Indian writing edited by Elizabeth West and Salman Rushdie; attended convent school<\/a> in the Himalayas for a year; and wrote the introduction to Francesco Clemente\u2019s book on his watercolor exhibition<\/a> \u201cEmblems of Transformation.\u201d <\/p>\n

She urges her readers\u2014and all readers\u2014to \u201csupport libraries and librarians. Stand for free speech, when it does not incite violence, even when you don\u2019t love what the other person has to say.\u201d She adds, \u201cThere are so many writers in prison around the world\u2014it\u2019s such a tragedy and outrage. Please learn about them, support them, and support PEN<\/a>, the organization that helps these authors.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than anything else, books have taught Desai \u201cwhat the poet, Joseph Brodsky, called the \u2018privateness of the human condition.\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cWhich other art form can reveal the thoughts we confess to nobody, not even to ourselves?\u201d <\/p>\n

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai<\/p>\n

\"<i>The<\/a><\/p>\n

Now 34% Off<\/p>\n

Credit: Hogarth<\/p>\n

Likes:<\/strong> writing in kitchens and verandas<\/a>, not in caf\u00e9s or office spaces<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dislikes: <\/strong>bananas.<\/p>\n

Good at<\/strong>: solitude<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bad at<\/strong>: making souffle<\/a>; shelving books<\/a> while she worked in a library during college.<\/p>\n

Peruse through her book recommendations below. <\/p>\n

The book that…:\u2026I wish I could read again for the first time:<\/p>\n

The Leopard<\/a> by Guiseppe di Lampedusa. What an exquisite delight it was to first enter this world: the stultifying summer heat of Sicily, a crumbling aristocracy facing the rise of modern Italy in the 1860s, the rum jelly served at luncheon…<\/a><\/p>\n

    …first taught me to love reading:<\/p>\n

    Winnie-the-Pooh<\/a> by A.A. Milne. This was an Indian childhood where our bookshelves were laden with English children\u2019s books. We didn\u2019t play with teddy bears, but we read Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington Bear<\/a> by Michael Bond. How ridiculous? Yet, also not ridiculous, because in the end, we loved books and bears.<\/p>\n

      …helped me become a better writer:<\/p>\n

      The work of V.S. Naipaul<\/a>. A fearless author who never pandered to an audience. His roving intelligence traced the results of colonialism across borders, across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This was inspiring to me. <\/p>\n

        \u2026helped me through a difficult experience:<\/p>\n

        When my father was dying, I didn\u2019t think there were enough books about looking after a dying parent, about family dynamics at this intensely difficult moment. Family Matters<\/a> by the wonderful Rohinton Mistry is one book I counted on.<\/p>\n

          \u2026made me weep uncontrollably:<\/p>\n

          David Copperfield<\/a> by Charles Dickens. The scene where the waiter keeps tricking the little orphan boy out of food.<\/p>\n

            …shaped my worldview:<\/p>\n

            Maus<\/a> by Art Spiegelman. A book that is as important today as it ever was. <\/p>\n

              …I read in one sitting; it was that good: <\/p>\n

              I had never read Slaughterhouse-Five<\/a> by Kurt Vonnegut. When I was in a rented casita in Mexico at the start of Covid, and the biblioteca closed, I found this book on the shelf. The opening pages! I had nobody to tell how wonderful they were other than a tired, bedraggled opossum. I would shout down to it, \u201cI can\u2019t believe this book!\u201d<\/p>\n

                \u2026I consider literary comfort food:<\/p>\n

                The work of Agatha Christie<\/a>. Like every other reader, I feel cozy right away, in the company of Poirot and Miss Marple, no matter the unfolding murders. <\/p>\n

                  \u2026.I\u2019d take on vacation:<\/p>\n

                  Junichiro Tanizaki\u2019s A Cat, a Man, and Two Women<\/a>, translated by Paul McCarthy. The imperturbable cat, Lily, is at the center of this drama between wives, mother-in-law, and a man who is obsessed with his beautiful tortoiseshell feline.<\/p>\n

                  …I think should be a bestseller:<\/p>\n

                  Go, Went, Gone<\/a> by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky. It weaves the stories of many migrants together with that of a retired, lonely German academic. It is an extraordinary work about what we callously call \u201cmass migration.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u2026depicts a world I\u2019d like to live in: <\/p>\n

                  Lawrence Durrell\u2019s Prospero\u2019s Cell<\/a>. A lost idyll. The war begins, the bombs fall, the couple leave the island. But before they do: Beauty, beauty, beauty.<\/p>\n

                  \u2026features a character I\u2019d like to be friends with: <\/p>\n

                  I want to be friends with the grandmother in Tove Jansson\u2019s The Summer Book<\/a>. I love the voice of this old woman, brusque and honest to the point of rudeness. Who has time for social niceties in the last years of one\u2019s life?<\/p>\n

                  \u2026has the best opening line: <\/p>\n

                  \u201cIt was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.\u201d Maestro Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez in Love in the Time of Cholera<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                  \u2026has the greatest ending: <\/p>\n

                  Italo Calvino\u2019s The Baron in the Trees<\/a>. Cosimo sails off on a hot air balloon. Calvino brings the magic and adventure of a child\u2019s world into fiction for adults. His plots are always surprising.<\/p>\n

                  \u2026gave me faith in the power of books: <\/p>\n

                  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich<\/a> by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The moral power of this slender book against the huge apparatus of a brutal regime!<\/p>\n

                  Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:<\/strong> <\/p>\n

                  The Laurentian Library<\/a> in Florence, designed by Michelangelo.<\/p>\n

                  Read Kiran Desai\u2019s Book Recommendations\"<i>The<\/a>The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa<\/p>\n

                  Now 19% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Pantheon\"<i>Winnie-the-Pooh<\/i><\/a>Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne<\/p>\n

                  Now 28% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Dutton Books for Young Readers\"<i>Family<\/a>Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry<\/p>\n

                  Now 26% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Vintage Books\"<i>David<\/a>David Copperfield by Charles Dickens<\/p>\n

                  Now 16% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Penguin Classics\"<i>Maus<\/i><\/a>Maus by Art Spiegelman<\/p>\n

                  Now 55% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Pantheon\"<i>Slaughterhouse-Five<\/i><\/a>Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut<\/p>\n

                  Now 57% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Dial Press Trade Paperback\"<i>A<\/a>A Cat, A Man, And Two Women by Junichiro TanizakiCredit: Daunt Books\"<i>Go,<\/a>Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck<\/p>\n

                  Now 37% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: New Directions\"<i>Prospero's<\/a>Prospero’s Cell by Lawrence DurrellCredit: Faber & Faber\"<i>The<\/a>The Summer Book by Tove JanssonCredit: NYRB Classics\"<i>The<\/a>The Baron In The Trees by Italo Calvino<\/p>\n

                  Now 46% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Mariner Books Classics\"<i>One<\/a>One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn<\/p>\n

                  Now 45% Off<\/p>\n

                  Credit: Berkley <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com\u2019s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you\u2019re on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":284447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,89142,146647,16975,171,3181,2875,146646,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-284446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-content-type-round-up-products","10":"tag-contentid-89beb94a-0200-452d-8138-4a617d49d49f","11":"tag-displaytype-long-form-article","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-hasproduct-true","14":"tag-locale-us","15":"tag-shorttitle-shelf-life-kiran-desai","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115334127932351541","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}