Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed, more you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm very happy to have us my guest, Kieran Desai.

Her novel, The Inheritance of Loss, has been published in paperback by Grove.

It is the Man Booker Prize winner for 2006, and recently it also won the National

Book Critic Circle Award, which makes it quite an extraordinary book.

Now, I read an interview with you in which you were talking about the experience of perfection in the novel.

And I wondered, since to my mind, people are more often talking about the loose baggy monster

than about perfection, what novels have given you the experience of perfection as a reader?

You know, certain novels, I think, do come across us.

You just think, this is a perfect novel.

But maybe perfect in one way.

I mean, I think of reading, for example,

I'm just pulling one thing out of my head,

reading in cold blood, perfect book.

You think it's perfectly balanced.

It's a work that really seems. in cold blood, perfect book. You think it's perfectly balanced.

It's a work that really seems exactly right.

But I think, you know, there's a lot of emphasis on producing, say, a perfect short story these days.

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