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7 October 2025
7:00 pm to 8:15 pm
All ages welcome
£12
manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/kiran-desai
manchester.ac.uk/museum
Family
Manchester Literature Festival
We’re thrilled to welcome acclaimed author Kiran Desai to discuss her long-awaited new novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny – an epic, intimate love story set across India, the USA and Mexico, spanning a decade of shifting politics.
Twenty years after winning the Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran returns with her most ambitious novel yet – a sweeping, tender, and sharply observed story of two young people caught between family, tradition, and their own desires. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny navigate the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next.
Join us for a rare opportunity to hear one of the most brilliant literary voices of our time.
Presented in partnership with Manchester Museum.
‘Kiran Desai reveals the breadth and depth of time, how it weighs on families and nations caught within the drama of history. She captures this with a rare and astute sensitivity that, no matter her subject, casts a light on our present.’ Hisham Matar
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.
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