In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge s cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are often on his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. Kiran Desai s brilliant novel, published to huge acclaim, is a story of joy and despair. Her characters face numerous choices that majestically illuminate the consequences of colonialism as it collides with the modern world."

Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for her second novel "The Inheritance of Loss," Kiran Desai is one of the most talented writers of her generation. Now available for the first time as a Grove Press paperback, "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard"Desai s dazzling debut novelis a wryly hilarious and poignant story that simultaneously captures the vivid culture of the Indian subcontinent and the universal intricacies of human experience. Sampath Chawla was born in a time of drought into a family not quite like other families, in a town not...