Kiran Desai Interview: The World Arrived in Books

Because she spent her childhood in an India, that had not yet opened its doors to the larger world, Indian novelist, Kiran Desai, had only her knowledge from books to rely on, before she later became an immigrant. “We read as if we were exiles”, says Desai of the long summer afternoons spent reading in her home in Delhi. The beloved bookshelf of Desai’s childhood was full of international books, from Truman Capote to Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Virginia Wolf. This proved an advantage, when she, as a teenager, m