Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies

T. V. N. Swathi ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of English, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur (A.P.), IN

Abstract

Winner of the Booker prize 2006, Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971. Daughter of an eminent Indian English author Anita Desai, Kiran Desai has carved out a name for herself as a novelist by writing just two novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss. The plot of Inheritance of Loss narrates the parallel stories of a Gujarati family in the foothills of the north-eastern Himalayas and of undocumented immigrants in the New York. She brilliantly charts the map of Indian diaspora where past and present live in uneasy juxtaposition. Set in mid-1980s' India, on the cusp of the GNLF movement for an independent state, the novel brings together many contemporary issues like migration, exile, effects of colonialism, modernity, identity and better way of living etc. She writes not just about India but about Indian communities in the world. Kiran has described her own sense of alienation from America even though it is her permanent home now. A member of the Indian diaspora, Kiran's love for India is unlimited. This paper discusses the immigrants' life in the novel The Inheritance of Loss.

Keywords

Immigrant, Indian Diaspora, Colonialism, Multiculturalism, Identity Migration, Alienation and Better Way of Living, Immigrant, Banana Reepublic, GNLF (Gorkha National Leberation Front).

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