The New Statesman.

Two decades ago, a bright new star seemed to shine in the literary firmament.

With only her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss,

Kieran Desai, won the Booker Prize, the leading literary prize in the global Anglosphere,

becoming, at the time, the youngest person ever to do so.

She was then 35.

Then silence, 19 years of it, before another novel emerged this year, the loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.

It too has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Will Desai win it again?

She joins me today on the New

Statesman podcast with me, Tangil Rashid, to discuss migration, globalization and the future of

the Indian novel in English. Welcome, Kieran. Thank you so much. J.M. could say, Peter Carey,

Hillary Mantel and Margaret Atwood, those are the four authors who have won the Booker Prize twice.

How does it feel to think you might be about to join that club potentially?

D'Angelo, I don't think in that way at all.

I'm nervous, of course.

I'm delighted to be nominated, but it's also scary because I remember what a circus it is.

It was a circus.

Yes, that's how it felt.

And, I mean, there's another club that you sort of belong to, that is to say,

the likes of Arundati Roy, Salman Rosti, Aravind Adiga.

There was a vogue for South Asian writers who were sort of garlanded with prizes

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