Review Summaries

• Readers praise the sharpness of the language and the breadth of the social vision. Because the perspective shifts repeatedly, the book tends to divide readers between those who enjoy its scope and those who find it diffuse.

Reviews

• Loved it

  I am glad I picked this book to amongst those to read this month. I enjoyed it from the start to finish. An appealing setting, fast pace and fascinating characters made me to read it the second time.It features with titles like The Usurper and Others, Good Earth,Bookseller of Kabul as culturally distinct books that I enjoyed.

• 喪失の連鎖

  ヒマラヤの麓、西ベンガル州に位置するカリンポンが実際にインドの一部であることは、物語の中の新聞でボンベイやデリーのあまり関係のない記事と一緒に記載されていることによっても伺うことが出来るが、この町にはそれにおさまらないものがある。インドとネパールとシッキムとブータンとチベットとイギリスの力の政治に蹂躙された多文化・多民族の町。宣教師の影響で教育機関が集まる土地でもあり、ネパールやブータンやバングラデシュ等の周辺地域からも子弟が集うことで知られる。カリンポンで1986〜88年にかけて勃発した、ネパール系住民のゴルカ国民解放戦線による民族自決・独立国家要求運動と暴動を背景としつつ、物語はこの町に隠居する元エリート裁判官Jemubhai、両親の死別に伴い彼と共に暮らすこととなる孫娘Sai、ゴルカで数学家庭教師のGyan、裁判官の料理人、その息子でニューヨークの不法移民社会を生きるBijuの周りの人物や出来事を描く。 達成は喪失ほど深く感じられるか。登場人物の殆どが何らかの形で西洋や近代世界に触れて屈折した思いや喪失感を抱いて様々に反応し、うまくこの世界に適合しないような部分を抱えている。自分の中にあるものも含めてインド的なものを否定してイギリス人のようになりたいと願ったり、旅をしたいと望んだり、全ての負の遺産を植民地主義や経済格差や異なる民族のせいにしたり、美化された故郷に愛着を覚えたり、といった具合に。著者は、これらが世代を超えて連鎖して歴史や神話となり、憎しみや苦味や愛着として増幅する様子を、鋭い洞察力をもって描く。ユーモアをもった筆致で書かれているのと少しばかりの希望が残されているので、過度に重苦しいということはない。また、物語はグローバル化、植民地主義、人種差別、所得や富の格差、社会階層、ナショナリズム、共通の記憶、人間の尊厳、テロなどの要素に思考を誘う。

• Bellissimo

• Ein absoluter Liebingsroman.

• Great read ...a real story - family saga type fro an accomplished writer that knows what she is doing.

• One of the most beautifully authentic books I've ever read, Desai's THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS is also one of the grimmest. It reminds me very much of a luscious nightmare, one which you awake from remembering not stories or events, but a strange, unshakable tone or hue. You couldn't say, upon waking, what has you so disturbed, but you can say that it is heartbreaking -- even distressing -- in the way of all truly gorgeous things. Desai has not written a story here. Not at all. Instead, she has shaped and colored four perfect lights. One light shines on Jemubhai Patel, a retired Indian judge steeped in a borrowed British heritage, his closest friend a dog named Mutt. Another light illuminates Sai, Patel's granddaughter, an orphaned transplant from the muddy half-world that exists at the borders between culture and indoctrination. The final two lights spread the hem of their glow around the judge's twitchy, superstitious cook, and Biju, the cook's son, now scrabbling through the grimy microcosm that (just barely) houses America's lowest working class. These lights have fuzzy edges, and where they overlap, the colors are almost indescribable. The connections between these four people aren't quite so remarkable as the way they are described. The novel's larger themes -- colonialism, cultural disaffection, the clockwork precision of tyranny, unrest, and rebellion -- are treated with a plain-faced simplicity, Desai's real talents aimed more at the individuals who must learn how to deal with the sometimes invisible ripples of politics and passion. Chapter Twenty-Eight begins, "The judge was thinking of his hate." For many, this will be a novel of hate, a book of tiresome gloom, and I won't say that's not true on more than one level. Life (and literature even more so) is about, if anything, conflict and entropy. The second law of thermodynamics just as easily applies to hearts and souls as it does to kinetic energy, and Desai's book deals with all of those things with a prose that is both dark and crystalline. Because Desai is more concerned with a tableau than with a plot, because her lights illuminate a stage and not a story, many might find the book to be a gorgeous but meandering mess. And with "stories" of this type, it's difficult to find an ending that is anything but abortive. It took Desai seven years to write this novel, and that's just as evident in her fluid narrative technique as it is in her denoument. Like a child releasing a helium-filled balloon, this novel doesn't so much end as just drift away. A fittingly torturous finale to a book of so much hubris and humanity, it may not be as satisfying as the rest of the book, but it is at least as touching, and certainly as brilliant.

• The Inheritance of Loss is a beautifully crafted, melancholic novel that explores displacement, identity and the quiet fractures left by colonial history. Kiran Desai moves gracefully between the mist-covered slopes of Kalimpong and the harsh realities of immigrant life in New York, revealing how personal dreams collide with political tensions. Her prose is lyrical yet sharp, and her characters—lonely, proud, hopeful, wounded—feel achingly real. Desai’s great achievement is her ability to show how loss can echo across continents and generations, shaping lives in ways both subtle and devastating. It’s a novel that lingers, not because it offers comfort, but because it tells the truth with extraordinary tenderness.

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