← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Kiran Desai's New Epic Novel, 'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny'
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- [00:09]
A
This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In 2006, writer Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize for her novel the Inheritance of loss. Now, nearly 20 years later, Kiran's new novel has been shortlisted for the Booker. It took her 20 years to write it book, but that was time well spent. The novel has been called, quote, a masterpiece. It's titled the Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny. At the center of the story are two young people who have left their home in India to build a future in America. Sonia wants to be a novelist, but when a sort of toxic relationship brings her to New York City, she finds herself adrift. In a moment of despair, she asks her family to broker an arranged marriage. Her grandparents have their eyes set on Sunny, the grandson of their neighbors. Sonny also lives in New York. He works for the AP and lives with his American girlfriend. Sunny rejects the idea of an arranged marriage and he and Sonya move on with their lives. Until one day their paths cross back at home in India. And despite the original failed match, they discover they might be a good fit after all. The Loneliness of Sania and Sonia is a love story. A tale of immigration, a generational saga, a story of changing India, a chronicle of the creative process and so much more. In addition to making the Booker Prize shortlist, the novel is also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. It is out now and I'm joined in studio by author Kiran Desai. It is nice to meet you.
- [01:40]
B
Thank you. I'm honored to be here.
- [01:42]
A
How is this book that is in my hands? A 700 page book?
- [01:46]
B
Yes.
- [01:47]
A
How is it different from the book that you set out to write?
- [01:50]
B
Oh, you know, it was a discovery. It was, I think, what I was after. I knew I wanted to write about how modernity affects us spiritual beings in very elemental matters of love and loneliness. So I had the idea of writing about romantic loneliness and sort of also writing a big desi, globalized love story. I thought that we needed that. A big modern day love story of two Indians out in the big world. But what surprised me as I was writing, you know, about Sonia and Sunny, their families going back to the time of their grandparents, their parents, talking of how different love stories affect Sunny and Sonia's love stories, the stories they encounter. So I was going back historically, but I was also going traveling across geographies. The book takes place in Mexico, in, in New York, in Venice, in Italy, in India. I realized that I could broaden the scope of this book and not just focus on romantic loneliness, but also about the great Divides between nations. The rage between nations that we are seeing playing out right now. The distrust between races, huge divide, class divide that just seems to be, you know, growing larger and larger. Feminism, promise of feminism, failure of feminism. The natural world, I mean, you know, vanishing. And the sort of vanishing creatures of our world. The forest vanishing, the past of our parents, grandparents, just of falling away now. So I decided to see all of those things through the lens of loneliness. And so the scope of the book changed, and then it grew longer, and then it grew longer. And at one time it was 5,000 pages. Can you believe it?
- [03:59]
A
Okay, let's. I had that issue down the road, but since you brought it up. Yeah, it's 700 pages, but it was 5,000 pages. What did you learn in those additional 4,300 pages that didn't make it into the novel, but informs the novel?
- [04:17]
B
Yeah. So, you know, I followed a vast cast of characters and, you know, sort of was also thinking of books that I really loved, love stories that I read while writing this book. Like Anna Karenina, for example, or Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being. Also Marquez, the Great Master Maestro, Love in the Time of Cholera. But so thinking of a large cast of characters, you know, of how every love story maybe includes the stories of other family members.
- [04:56]
A
Did you read those separately? Did you stop read a book, a book that you. That meant something to you and go back to writing? Or was this while you were writing?
- [05:03]
B
While I was writing, reading, you know. And a lot of those books came into these pages because Sunny and Sonia are both writers. One is a journalist and one is an aspiring novelist. But what they read also deeply informs their love story, and their lives change depending on what they're reading. And there's a lot of art in this book. So I was following that idea as well. But 5,000 pages. One of the stories it was hard to cut out was about Sunny's close friend Satya, who is a doctor in rural Kentucky. And I'm so fascinated by the stories, that story, you know, of that one Indian, that one foreigner in rural America, which happens often because that's a particular visa category that you can sign up for a program, I think it's called the Appalachian Program, that sends a doctor to rural America as part of an immigration process. So I was fascinated by that. Such a different immigration story from Sunny's and Sonia's in New York City and mine. So that interested me. That was one of the things that.
- [06:20]
A
Got left out as you were writing the book. And all of these ideas are Coming to you.
- [06:29]
B
Did.
- [06:29]
A
You obviously just kept writing them. Like you didn't think, oh, I don't need that. Oh, I don't need that. You just kept writing them. Why did you keep writing them?
- [06:39]
B
I think I was not just, you know, I was also searching for this novel. I was creating material. And I was creating material for this book and perhaps for other books. I also followed a story into 1920s Germany, actually, so that was, you know, interested in the rise of nationalism in India, following those ideas. So I was thinking both intellectually and emotionally. But yes. So I was describing it to someone the other day. I said that I think I was working, like one of the characters in this book says, you know, like a bee or. Or ant or an earthworm. Every day, taking a bit of real life and transposing it into artistic life, transferring it into pages.
- [07:31]
A
My guest is Kiran Desai. Am I saying it right?
- [07:35]
B
Yes. Perfect. Okay.
- [07:36]
A
We're speaking about your new novel, the Loneliness of Sonya and Sonny. People change a lot over the course of 20 years.
- [07:45]
B
Yes.
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A
What's one way that you changed as a person which affected the novel?
- [07:53]
B
I became very solitary because I was working so hard and the book was so large. And I vanished into the pages of this book. I became incredibly stubborn.
- [08:06]
A
Stubborn?
- [08:07]
B
Yeah, I mean, you know, because, I mean, of course people were saying, finish the book, Kiran. It's, you know. And I didn't notice the passing of years except for on my birthday when I. It was always a fright. I was just incredibly scared on my birthday when I realized another year had gone by and I had not finished my book. But there was something in me that is fascinating actually to me. I don't quite understand it myself because despite myself, I get up and I go straight to my desk and I will carry on working and I will not be swayed by what anyone is saying. I was not wrapping up the book. I was getting up, going to my work. I had a very, very strong discipline, which is. I mean, I already had it while writing my last book, Inheritance of Loss. But it became quite extreme and I think I was living quite austerely, very quietly, stubbornly. And it's kind of like spiritual discipline.
- [09:05]
A
That took you into a monastery to write.
- [09:07]
B
It was like that. It was really like a spiritual discipline. Although, you know, I live in Jackson Heights, so it's pret. Incredibly busy outside my window.
- [09:15]
A
May I ask you just a really sort of a little bit of a blunt question? How did you navigate with your publisher and with your editor taking 20 years to write a novel?
- [09:25]
B
Yes. And Well, I was lucky, you know, because who keeps the faith for so long? And my editors did. So, you know, when they talk about publishing being a brutal business, that was not true for me. I had this wonderful editor for a long time by the name of Robin Dessa. And then she retired. So that was one thing about taking 20 years.
- [09:49]
A
She retired.
- [09:50]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And the publisher who bought this book actually passed away. You know, things happen like that, Alison. So that was hard. But I had. Then the book was. You know, I have a new editor, David Ebisoff. So nice for me to mention their names on the radio and honor them because they. They put no pressure on me. It's just astounding. Neither did my agent. They just trusted me. And I think it was years. I mean, I think this. It was years before they saw a draft, and then it was several more years before they saw another draft.
- [10:27]
A
But they believed in you, though.
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B
They did.
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A
That's gotta feel really good.
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B
It's absolutely astonishing and amazing. Yes.
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A
I understand your mother is your reader, your first reader.
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B
Yes.
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A
Why is your mom your first reader?
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B
My mom is a novelist, Anita Desai. And so we came to the United States together. You know, she left, I think, when she was 50 years old. She'd been writing in India. It's kind of astounding for a woman to be working that way in the 60s and 70s and a woman who was married with four children. And she had that discipline of going to her desk and she collected books, you know, from all over the world. I grew up with her bookshelves. So I'm really working out of. Out of what she. What I inherited from her. I owe her so much. And the writing. Her writing eventually opened a door. You know, her work was being published overseas. We kind of understood as children, her, you know, her growing fame. When foreign publishers would come and stay with us in New Delhi in India, glamorous translators from Scandinavia would arrive in the kaftans. Beautiful French translator, go to an ashram, come back, you know, with all her tummy troubles. And so one day, I think she was invited eventually to be a writer in residence in Cambridge in England. And I was the youngest child, the youngest of four, so she took me with her. And then she started teaching a semester, a year at Smith and Mount Holyoke, eventually mit. And so we sort of came together. She had to learn how to drive, how to teach. I had to go to American high school. All of these things.
- [12:23]
A
I'm curious what your desk looks like. You said you get up and you go to your desk. What does it look like?
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B
Well, they are those 5,000 pages. There are many piles of 5,000 pages. Yes. There are lots and lots of piles of paper, each one bound up with bands to separate it from the other. Piles of paper. Yes.
- [12:48]
A
And does it face a wall? Do you face a window?
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B
Where does it face? It faces my backyard in Jackson Heights. So. And you know, sometimes I work in my kitchen. I like to work in my kitchen. So I work in my kitchen and I go up to my. To my desk. It overlooks apricot tree. Apricot tree in Jackson Heights? Yeah. Full of squirrels. And it being Queens and New York, rats.
- [13:18]
A
Comes with territory.
- [13:19]
B
Yes. Yeah. And very, very Jackson Heights rats and squirrel. You know, somebody told me just spray everything with chili pepper to keep them away from your apricots. But they love chili pepper. Chili pepper, apricots.
- [13:34]
A
My guest is Kiran Desai. We're speaking about her new novel, the Loneliness of Sonja and Sunny. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is author Kiran Desai. We're speaking about her new novel, the Loneliness of Sonya and Sunny. So Sonya and Sunny both start this. In this, in this novel, they start with relationships with white romantic partners, right? She, Sonia's dating an unstable, unstable artist. And Sunny's dating this woman who is from Kansas. What's drawing each person into this relationship?
- [14:21]
B
You mean with each other? To each other, eventually, actually.
- [14:25]
A
I mean with their white partners.
- [14:27]
B
Oh, with the other partners. This is interesting. Yes. So they come from, you know, a very Westernized background in India, English speaking, sort of a community of people who are brought up barely to even touch their own country, who grew up without taking a bus, you know, without visiting a public restroom. They're brought up to leave. And I think there's one scene in the book where somebody observes that in the living rooms of this class, there are no children anymore. The children are in Oxford, Cambridge, Sloane, Kettering, McKinsey, you know, all over the world, but not at home. So there are all these parents on their own actually growing old alone because their parents, their children have been, have been, they expected to leave and excel overseas. So Sunny and Sonia both come from that background. And Sonny, for example, knows, although nobody will say so, this is why we read fiction because, you know, we can say things in pages that people don't utter out loud. He's expected to find a white girlfriend and he's expected to belong to, you know, to Move towards whiteness and privilege in a way.
- [15:52]
A
Assimilate in a way.
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B
And to assimilate, yes. And he's been sent out with the language, the, you know, the habits, all of that, prepared to do that. And he does. And he's living in Fort Greene at the time when Fort Greene is becoming very gentrified. The book is set back in the past a little bit and they have, you know, they're so beautiful in the mirror. They're enchanted by the image of themselves. And Ula is with this man from overseas. She's being adventurous. She's left Kansas, although at one time she says it's easier for an Indian to be in New York City than it is for a woman from the Midwest. And New York is more welcoming to a foreigner. That was also, I think, an interesting observation. But Sunny knows that he is proud of this image. He's proud of it, but he knows that he's ashamed to be proud for the reason he's proud. And he begins to tear apart this beautiful picture in the mirror and to undo it despite himself.
- [16:59]
A
Would you like to read a passage from the book? I think that would be great. This is a good place for you to read.
- [17:03]
B
In fact, this is. This is the marriage proposal from the grandparents arriving in Fort Greene. This is sent by Sonia's grandparents to Sonny's grandparents and then sent by his mother on to New York. And so it was one gusty day In May of 1997, a mailman trudged down the streets of Fort Greene in Brooklyn and plucked a letter from his bag. It almost flew from his hands, but it didn't and he dropped it through the stiff brass mail slot of a sober liver colored brownstone where it lay on the dulled parquet until Lou Orsini, who'd lived forever on the second floor, scooped it up, almost tossed it out with the Panda Garden delivery menus, but didn't. He saw it in time and propped it on the stairs. When Ulla and Sunny returned from the Korean deli with toilet paper, tofu sprouts and six Assort Artisan ales, Ulla almost trod on it, but didn't. She made pincers of her fingers and brought it up despite her hands being full. Ulla was the girlfriend Sunny had never happened to mention to his family, although for over a year now they had shared a lease, a bed, a con edge utility bill, a laundry basket, and on some absent minded occasions, a toothbrush. What does your mother say? Asked Ulla, unlacing her sneakers. Sunny would forever regret not Bundling the letter away. But it was so astonishing that his guard was down. Look. He exclaimed, I'm a marriage proposal. Oh, how could he have forgotten that love, when it arrives, arrives always twinned to its destructive force as inevitably as God and devil, life and death, home and the leaving of it. That information collected during sweeter moments will be turned to ammunition and discharged during war. That what is innocent in the morning will not remain so by nightfall. Because his mother's letters held grotesque fascination for Ulla, who found them as riveting as Masterpiece Theater, Sunny was in the habit of handing the pages to her. After he'd skimmed through, Ula opened the second envelope enclosed within the first. And what's this? She pounced. And there was Sonia, tall, slender, a braid down to her waist, standing against snow laden furs in a disconcerting curry colored coat.
- [19:43]
A
That was Kiran Desai reading from the Loneliness of Sonya and Sunny. In getting these letters from home, it reminded me how generational the story is as well. What did you want to explore about the generational differences between these families?
- [20:02]
B
Yes, these are in fact the days of aerograms, you know, which was my first days in the United States and going to college. They let these blue aerograms would come from India. In other words, you'd wait for your parents to call in the phone booth in your college. But what interested me about the different generations was that in the past of Sunny and Sonia's grandparents, and perhaps also their parents, an Indian love story would have been centered in one community, one class, one religion, most likely one place. And in Sonia and Sunny's generation, though, out in the big world, it's so much a matter of chance who you might or might not meet. And they keep asking themselves, why this person? Why not someone else? Why this place? Why not another place? So it's a completely different story. And they're seeking love and a sense of belonging at the same time. Their own sense of self is turning so fluid and sometimes the sense of self is completely dislocated, displaced because of the experiences they're going through. But the older generation, I think Sonia says at one point her grandparents, they wouldn't even have even mentioned the word love. You know, they're rooted somewhere much deeper, more elemental.
- [21:26]
A
How does she feel about that?
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B
I think there's another character who says he longs for that old fashioned love because, you know, there are people so innocent that they didn't even know that they don't even know that loneliness exists. I mean, these are people who have never lived alone, never Slept in a room alone, never eaten a meal alone. At the same time, of course, it's a privilege to be able to travel and to make choices. And Sonia and Sania are very privileged. So as with many things in the book, they feel, I think, two ways. They feel two ways about many things. Do you think? Two contradictory ways.
- [22:10]
A
Do you think this is a love story at the heart of it?
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B
Yes, it is. I think Sannia and Sonia don't meet all that often, but when they do.
- [22:20]
A
It'S like, I think it's like 200 pages before they meet.
- [22:23]
B
200 pages before they meet. That's right. And they both have had very different experiences, but it's a love story. And it's also a story that's held together by the. It's divided and held together by the spaces that separate them. And you know, so these divisions and rifts that they must. They sort of come up against when they are trying to get together. Thinking of getting together, all the divisions that they have to come up against. That's. But yes, it's in a way, Alison, I think it's actually a very old fashioned love story. Yeah.
- [23:10]
A
This book has gotten so much acclaim. What does that mean to you?
- [23:16]
B
I'm thrilled for Sonia and Sunny, really. You know, they're characters that I became very close to. And of course it's so wonderful to put out a book and to have it loved, you know, have it be loved in this way and maybe, you know, maybe I hope it bridges some of the lonelinesses.
- [23:43]
A
The name of the book is the Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny. My guest has been author Kiran Desai. Thank you so much for coming to the studio.
- [23:52]
B
Thank you very much.
- [23:54]
A
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B
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A
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