Exotic to whom? 
Tessa Hadley
- The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
In The Inheritance of Loss, her second novel, Kiran Desai addresses herself to an Indian culture in which globalisation isn’t imagined but experienced, whether in exile abroad or as a result of painful social and cultural displacements within the country itself. This makes the novel sound rather gloomily earnest, but Desai’s scepticism and fearfulness are expressed as a dark exuberance: she can’t help relishing the textures of the fragmentation she describes.
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Tessa Hadley teaches at Bath Spa University. A collection of stories, Sunstroke, and a novel, The Master Bedroom, were published last year.
Other articles by this contributor:
An Attic Full of Sermons · Marilynne Robinson
Dream Leaps · Alice Munro
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