With THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY, which took nearly 20 years to write, Kiran Desai returns to the public that loved HULLABALOO IN THE GUAVA ORCHARD and THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS.

The book introduces readers to a couple of young artists trying to find their way to happiness after being haunted by the ghosts of their pasts and the painful misappropriations of the modern world. With vivid glimpses into the expectations and upheavals of life in India and the United States, namely New York City, Desai gives Sonia and Sunny over 600 delightful pages over which to make their journeys, separate and together.

The first time these characters meet is when their grandparents try to match them up in India. Then, on a bumpy overnight train, they see each other again, but the embarrassment of how they know each other keeps them from reconnecting. Will they ever come back together on their own? THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY takes its time answering that question.

"THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY is an entertaining and triumphant return for a beloved author who has one foot in the old world and the other firmly planted in the new world."

Sonia wants to be a novelist, leaving her college in Vermont with a degree and great aspirations. Off to India she goes, returning to a family that bears with her but may not understand all the ways in which she grew over those four years. She also believes that a dark spell haunts her, and it’s from an artist she used to know. Sonny wants to be a great journalist and settles in New York City. He knows that he can’t create the life he wants unless he's away from his mother and the warring factions of his family.

Here we have two intelligent, hopeful, inspired and yearning young adults. If you think you know where this story is headed, Desai offers a multitude of new angles for readers to love.

The Indian class system, the American “freedom” and its expectations, family battles and world-wide revelations create the foundation for this generational story told through the eyes of the kinds of searchers who don’t get their own sitcoms. Sonia and Sunny come together to assist each other in ways that only they can understand. Desai clearly wants us to feel empathy for them and see the depths inside their characters that make them truly individual and symbolic figures of one of life’s hardest passages --- the reality of adult existence.

“As Sonia and Sunny sent messages back and forth and continued to make plans to meet in the winter…she dreamt the walls leaked blood…. She dreamt a lascivious hound awaited her. He came with his friends, a scorpion and a snake…. Why was the fear in her still a chronic condition that may, at any moment, resurrect?” From this passage alone, it’s clear that the haunted past of each character is going to come alive on these pages in the most magical and frightening ways possible.

In this world, a global community coming apart at the seams, THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY arrives as a welcome diversion to the madness, but it doesn’t let reality off the hook either. The experiences of these sharply defined characters are unforgettable, and their reactions to their families are readily understandable. Yet Sonia and Sunny lead us deeper into the specifics of their lives as Indian nationals, as a new generation trying desperately to please both an older generation and a swiftly changing world at large.

THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY is an entertaining and triumphant return for a beloved author who has one foot in the old world and the other firmly planted in the new world. The preternaturally talented Kiran Desai manages to bring old and new concerns to her protagonists, and every reader has a chance to learn and grow with them.