Barack Obama adds Kiran Desai`s `Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny` to his favourite books list! Discover this Booker Prize nominee exploring love, identity & belonging. Click to learn more!
Indian author Kiran Desai’s novel ‘Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ has earned a place on former US president Barack Obama’s annual list of favourite books, drawing global attention to the Booker Prize-shortlisted work.
Obama, who has made it a year-end tradition to share his favourite films, music and books, released his 2025 list on social media platform X as the year drew to a close.
“As 2025 comes to a close, I’m continuing a tradition that I started during my time in the White House: sharing my annual lists of favorite books, movies, and music,” he wrote, inviting readers to explore new works alongside his picks.
Among the titles highlighted was Desai’s Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a sweeping, nearly 700-page novel that traces the lives of two young Indians, Sonia and Sunny, immigrants navigating love, identity and belonging across continents.
The novel was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, with judges praising it as an epic of love and family spanning multiple countries and generations, and calling it Desai’s most accomplished and ambitious work to date.
Desai, one of India’s most celebrated contemporary writers, rose to international prominence with The Inheritance of Loss, which won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Set in the Himalayas, the novel examined themes of identity, cultural conflict and the legacy of colonialism, and made Desai the youngest woman to win the Booker Prize at the time.
Born in Delhi, Desai spent her early years in Punjab and Mumbai before moving to the United States. She is the daughter of renowned novelist Anita Desai and made her literary debut with Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998), which won the Betty Trask Award.
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