Kiran Desai this week at the Alley Theatre stage, where they're showing the Christmas Carol. Photo: Shafaq Patel/Axios.
👋 Shafaq here! I went to an Inprint reading of Kiran Desai's new book, "The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny," which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.
Events like these give Houston book lovers a peek behind the curtain — plus signed copies and conversation.
Driving the news: Desai read from her book and spoke about writing her first literary romance — exploring loneliness, diasporic life and shifting privilege, partly drawn from her time as an immigrant spending winters alone in Vermont.
She noted that an early draft stretched to 5,000 pages.
Flashback: Desai's first Inprint reading was for "The Inheritance of Loss," which won the Booker Prize in 2006.
What's next: Salman Rushdie returns Jan. 12 for his fifth Inprint appearance to share from his new book, "The Eleventh Hour."
$40 tickets, which include a copy of the book, went on sale this week.
