 Booker-winning author Kiran Desai talks about how her Indian heritage and identity shaped her writing.
Desai, who is 35, lived in India until she was 14, when she and her mother left first for the UK and then for the US, where she has lived ever since. However, she still holds on to her Indian passport. “Now I could become an American citizen, but then George Bush won and I’ve just been unable to bring myself to do so,” she explains, half-apologetically. “But again that’s silly because of course I pay taxes there and don’t vote, so it’s hypocritical in a way, but it held me back.”
Increasingly, too, she is unsure that she would really want to surrender her Indian citizenship. “I feel less like doing it every year because I realise that I see everything through the lens of being Indian. It’s not something that has gone away – it’s something that has become stronger. As I’ve got older, I have realised that I can’t really write without that perspective.”
Read the full interview here.