The Inheritance Of Loss – Kiran Desai

   This book, published in 2006, deservedly won the Man Booker Prize. The setting is India in the late 1980s, a town in the north-eastern Himalayas. The main characters: a retired cantankerous old judge and his orphaned grand-daughter, and the cook with his undocumented son struggling to survive in New York. And there are many other vivid characters.  The complexity and intensity of India is illustrated graphically, like perfect details of the sounds and smells of monsoon rains. And there is the chaos of a Nepali insurgency with excruciating civil unrest. Simply put, this is tour-de-force writing and a joy to read.