50 shades of loneliness

Booker-shortlisted author Kiran Desai on the soul-nourishing delights of solitude

- BY ANJULY MATHAI

It is 7:30am in New York, and Kiran Desai has been up for hours.

She has just finished one interview and will only have time to grab breakfast after this one, before the third begins. For someone who has had to begin her day by facing a barrage of questions, Kiran is remarkably perky. Perhaps because she is no stranger to waking up early. But for nearly two decades, it is she who has been asking the questions: How will her characters Sonia and Sunny respond to such-and-such situation? How can magical realism be incorporated here seamlessly? How to fictionalise this segment of her own life? How to hold together disparate strands of the plot?

For 19 years, ever since her Booker Prizewinning novel The Inheritance of Loss came out in 2006, Kiran, 54, has been working on her latest book, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Spending whole days immersed in writing, she has entered into the loneliness of her characters, breathing the very air they breathe. Some might say that she is not their creator; they are her creators. They have shaped her into their likeness.

"I use my loneliness," she tells THE WEEK. "I transform it into my work. It may be painful at times, but I also love it. I see the dark side, but I also see the worth of being alone as an artist, a writer and a woman."