Multiculturalism in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

Desai's second novel The Inheritance of Loss (2005), which won her the Man Bookers Prize in 2006 talks about her inheritance and the disinheritance that had come with globalization. It deals with a number of present-day issues such as economic inequality and poverty, fundamentalism and terrorist violence, but the major emphasis is on mobility and migration, on dislocation and the subsequent loss of background, of history and of family. Changes that are brought out by craze for western values, manners, language and lifestyle:impact of modernization, consumerism, and deep ischolar_mained reaction to indigenous values which failed to sustain life. The novel is set in Kalimpong situated at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the North Eastern part of India, which becomes volatile because of religious and ethnicities struggle to defeat biased treatment by Indians to indigenous people whose culture is more like their neighboring Asians. Primarily, the story of The Inheritance of Loss is set in India in the year 1986, a period of great turmoil. From the outset it is clear that the country and the people are crying out for an identity of their own, fighting between themselves and claiming ground for their own existence, as a nation and as individuals.