Kiran Desai’s third novel has been a long time in the making, said Lucy Scholes in The Daily Telegraph : its predecessor, “The Inheritance of Loss”, won the Booker Prize back in 2006. But despite this “lengthy gestation”, nothing about it “feels heavy or unwieldy”. A love story spanning nearly 700 pages, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” is a “magnificent” achievement – and is one of the “strongest” shortlisted contenders for this year’s Booker.

Its two main characters come from wealthy neighbouring families in the Indian city of Allahabad, but both are in America when the novel begins. Sonia, who aspires to be a novelist, is at college in Vermont; Sunny is a trainee reporter in New York . When both return to India (Sonia to get over a relationship, Sunny to help a childhood

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