The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
By Kiran Desai
Hogarth
ISBN: 978-0307700155
688pp.

I come back to Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss at least once a year, because the novel has become part of various high school and university curricula and inevitably makes its way into my classrooms.

Each time, we discuss the struggles of diasporic communities and the fractures that remain the legacy of our postcolonial histories of the Subcontinent; one theme that emerges from our conversations is loneliness, often stemming from political or geographic displacement.

In Desai’s latest novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, loneliness is more personal and intimate, found in corridors, hospital beds, family homes, and even in conversations where characters let things remain unspoken.

I wonder if teaching this novel might become an ordeal for me; how would I guide readers through a book so emotionally dense, when loneliness is the epidemic that has quietly invaded our lives? Is there a way to read beyond the contours of loneliness and find hope — not just in the novel — but also in the way solitude may materialise in our lives?

It is the depth of loneliness that makes The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny so compelling. At the beginning of the novel, we meet Sonia, who is studying literature and creative writing at Hewitt College during Vermont’s biting winter. She works at a library, reads Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys, recovers from heartbreak, and calls her parents in Allahabad on Sundays to heal from the ache of life away from home. Solitude becomes the teacher through which she writes stories for her creative writing thesis.

Later in the novel, as Sonia tends to her father in the hospital, her loneliness evolves. Desai shows Papa’s “Delhi party humour” being replaced by fragility and dependence; Sonia is a witness to her father’s suffering, and it is here in India, where her loneliness transforms. Where it was once introspective and offered some creative impetus, it is now tangible and urgent, found in her running between wards, dealing with incompetent attendants, and absorbing the painful reality of a loved one’s vulnerability.

Kiran Desai’s Booker Prize-nominated latest novel is about the rough, messy, delicate and complex textures of everyday life and human connection amid loneliness

This relational solitude also occupies the life of the other titular protagonist. A young journalist in New York, Sunny is physically present in the streets of Brooklyn but emotionally and mentally fighting battles that are thrown his way in the form of letters from across the ocean. The letters, carrying marriage proposals, the weight of tradition, and the steady demands of a widowed mother, exert a power over Sunny, threatening to rupture his relationship with his girlfriend, Ulla.

In one tense moment, when Ulla discovers the letters and the secrecy surrounding their relationship, her anger pushes Sunny to retreat; he “flee(s) for the subway”, unable to stand his ground during the confrontation. Later, he reflects on his inability to assure Ulla with any words: “He couldn’t articulate to Ulla, lest she claim to be the victim of his ambivalence, that his life now seemed at a remove, that it was sometimes unrecognisable to himself.”

In New York, Sunny is far from physically alone. Yet, his relational loneliness is profound. Caught between family, romantic love and competing loyalties, Sunny finds himself among so many who claim priority in his life without offering him the support he needs to hold him together.

His tragedy is especially poignant; despite being surrounded by those who care for him, none can bridge the gap between his inner isolation and the outward performance of stability he puts up for Ulla, his family and even his employers at the Associated Press.

Reading the passages, I couldn’t help but find echoes of Biju, the undocumented Indian worker from The Inheritance of Loss, who spends years in New York pursuing the green card not so much for himself as for his father’s pride in India. In writing Sunny, Desai reinvents displacement — it is not found across borders but merely within one’s own life.

Stylistically, Desai offers the kind of prose I aspire to teach in my writing classes. Her work is not too focused on maintaining and following the rigidities of plot; instead, she blends sharp observation with the emotional truths of her characters.

As the novel unfolds, the lives of the two protagonists move ahead in a parallel fashion, where their journeys of unpacking loneliness sometimes intersect, otherwise remain solo. There are no dramatic moments or sudden realisations that the characters undergo. Instead, in the slow pace of the novel, I not only take a tour of the spaces inhabited by the characters — spaces that Desai turns into personalities with her craft — but I also zoom into their minds and memories.

It seems as if Desai holds our hand and puts us within earshot of their interior worlds, often carrying a remorseful and mourning tone that is reminiscent of the narrator of Inheritance of Loss.

In her interview with Booker’s official website The Booker Prizes, Desai reflects that she wanted to explore “not just romantic loneliness, but the huge divides of class and race, the distrust between nations, the swift vanishing of a past world — all of which can be seen as forms of loneliness.” Yet, in The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, these larger concerns of politics take a backseat. Instead, the novel remains memorable for its intimate moments, like Sonia’s grandmother, Ba, sniffing the fridge to ensure honesty in the cook, bringing domestic humour and humanity to the narrative.

As the novel comes to a close, with Sonia and Sunny meeting after years of separation, there is warmth in me for having experienced a sweet romance rather than a historical reckoning or a polemic on politics. In fact, Desai’s nomination for the Booker Prize for the novel reminds us that literature today does not owe its readers any grand statements.

Instead, it can linger in our minds by unveiling the rough, messy, delicate and complex textures of everyday life and human connection amid loneliness. It is perhaps this fragile sense of hope that I may take with me into classrooms.

The reviewer is a Teaching Fellow at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, December 28th, 2025