shellkyle 's review for:

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

5.0

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This book is a revelation for anyone from a third-world country. The narrative is no-page turner but a breathtaking collection of vignettes that perfectly capture both the confusion and dark charm of living in a postcolonial reality. Desai's Kalimpong is a stand-in for an India that moves about its memories like the river Teesta - lurching backward into its Hindu roots but also hurtling towards modernity in an awkward rush. This is a no-holds barred dissection of colonial mentality, in which not only India but we all of us brown-skinned worship the white despite the material and cultural wealth they've divested us of. This manifests in all the variations of migration represented in the book: Biju who sought out a living in the U.S., the judge who had been sent to England for an education, and the multitude of minor characters' relations who hunted for refinement in the West. This way of thinking has such gravity that it has the power to remove a man's sense of cultural identity from his own land, though he has lived in it all his life, and this is a message I could not relate more with.

The duality about which the cast of characters are portrayed is wonderful - they each go through their own battles but the narration never fails to highlight the (often humorous) ironies circumscribing their lives. Quite possibly an invitation to look into the ones surrounding our own.