The loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Two young people glimpse each other on an overnight train in India and feel an instant pull, complicated by an awkward truth: their grandparents once tried to match them, and the meddling drove them apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist back from her studies in snowy Vermont, fears she is under a dark spell cast by an artist she once turned to. Sunny, a struggling journalist in New York, is trying to escape his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan.

Kiran Desai, who won the Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, returns with a long, generous novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025, that moves across continents and years. It is a love story and a family saga, alive to country, class, race and the bonds between generations. For readers who like to settle into a big, thoughtful novel and stay a while.