Identity Crisis in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss won a Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics circle Fiction Award. The man booker prize is a literary award. It is awarded every year for the best and original novel written in English. This novel The Inheritance of Loss was her second novel of Kiran Desai. She has explored the contemporary issue in her novel The Inheritance of Loss; she takes eight years to complete her novel. The various themes were united in the novel The Inheritance of Loss they are cultural clashes between two culture, identity crisis, poverty, isolation, cultural dilemma, racial discrimination. This paper will focus on the important character in the novel Sai and Biju. The novel takes place during 1986. Biju is a young crazy man and also about his journey. He lived permanently in the foreign country and sacrifices his own culture. Sai is an Indian girl lived with her grandfather. Then the author talks about past and present life as stream of consciousness and also between the two cultures. Biju suffers a lot in the western country for food and shelter. He tries to escape from there. Sai falls love with her tutor and suffer a lot because of the caste system prevails. But at last she expects her isolation and the search for identity.