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“... 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 ...”

“... At one point​ in Kiran Desai’s new novel the heroine, Sonia Shah, sets out to write a journalistic sketch of the Indian kebab, ‘massaged, marinated, oiled, spoiled, pampered, pompous, romantic’, but finds the subject expanding relentlessly. She researches the tabak maaz of Kashmir, the Afghani reshmi, the pathar kebab, ‘cooked on a hot stone to absorb the flavour of the minerals’, the dorra kebab, steamed in silk over low coals that have been smoked with sandalwood, and the kakori, named after the village where it was devised to accommodate the toothlessness of the local nawab: ‘It was ground anew with each addition of the fifty-two spices – actually, some said fifteen spices, some eight, but all vowed secrecy ...”

“... be called Global Literature. It has its royalty, like Coetzee and Ondaatje, Mohsin Hamid and Kiran Desai; its prizes (the Nobel, the International Man Booker), its festivals (Jaipur, Hay), and its intellectual support system (the universities). The success of World Literature, the editors said, is a by-product of successful capitalism, and of a ...”