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kartik_nagar 's review for:
The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai
Readers of Jhumpa Lahiri and Arundhati Roy will find this book very familiar. The immigration experience: how to assimilate into a different culture, what to do about one’s own culture and identity. The novel chronicles the tale of different characters going through this experience, and how they react and how they change. One of the earlier reviews uses the phrase ‘on the edge of tragic’ for this novel, which I think perfectly captures its essence. The novel contains many disturbing and harrowing incidents, but it always manages to avoid a headlong jump into despair, through its humour, the coziness of its setting, the warmth of various relationships among the characters, and by maintaining a distance between the reader and the characters. Through its course, the novel raises several sharp questions related to colonialism. Should a child be held accountable for the sins of the parents? Perhaps more pertinently, should a child be allowed to enjoy the privileges obtained through immoral actions of the parents?