The loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Sonia and Sunny meet on an overnight train in India and are instantly drawn to each other. Their embarrassment is compounded by a shared history: their grandparents once tried to matchmake them, and the clumsy meddling only pushed them apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist back with her family after her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, fears she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist she once turned to for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist in New York City, 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, has written a long, generous novel that moves across continents and years. The publisher describes it as an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. Ann Patchett, quoted on the jacket, says she wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever.