LitFest 2025: Love & Family, India & America, Tradition & Modernity with Booker Prize Winner Kiran Desai (“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny”)

In 2006, author Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. For nearly 20 years, the world has been waiting with bated breath for her next novel. Now it’s finally here, it’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, and it’s on the shortlist for the 2025 Booker Prize. 

This October, Kiran returns to City of Asylum for the first time since 2022 to share this groundbreaking new novel with LitFest audiences, in conversation with City of Asylum Curator for World Literature, Anderson Tepper. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny has been praised as “A transcendent triumph…not so much a novel as a marvel” (The New York Times Book Review) and “[d]evastating, lyrical, and deeply romantic…an unmitigated joy to read” (Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner). 

When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

You can purchase a copy of Kiran’s book, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

Kiran Desai is the bestselling author of two novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Born in India, she came to the US when she was sixteen and now lives in New York City.

About the Moderator:

Anderson Tepper is City of Asylum’s Curator of World Literature. He has been a guest curator of PEN America’s World Voices Festival and is a longstanding member of the international committee of the Brooklyn Book Festival. He writes on books and authors for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and World Literature Today. Anderson also serves on the City of Asylum Advisory Board.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is open for brunch from 9:30 to 2 p.m. and for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. Please visit OpenTable or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.