Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
**Kiran Desai’s** newest novel, *The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny*, is a spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years – an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025, *The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny* is a love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists. Desai is the author of *Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard*, which was published to unanimous acclaim in over 22 countries, and *The Inheritance of Loss*, which won the Booker Prize in 2006, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Readings are followed by discussion with the author and UCLA professor **Mona Simpson**, who organizes this series. Copresented by the UCLA Department of English. Limited books will be available for purchase.