The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny dissects love, identity, and impossible choices

📚 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, the 2025 novel by Kiran Desai, is an unusual love story about two people navigating life in very different worlds — India and the US, tradition and modernity, and the inability to fit into either world. It’s also about the dilemma of parents who are proud to send their kids to study far from home, where they can find and fulfill their destinies — then realizing that the outcomes aren’t what they expected.

The plot: The story begins in Allahabad, India. Sonia’s grandparents are puzzled by the fact that their granddaughter is lonely and depressed in Vermont, where she’s studying at an elite liberal arts college. The idea of depression is alien to them, and — like many in cultures where intergenerational households are the norm — they have no comprehension of what it means to live alone.

They decided that the solution to Sonia’s problems is to arrange an introduction to their neighbor’s grandson, Sunny, an aspiring journalist and recent Columbia grad originally from Delhi, who lives in New York. The matchmaking doesn’t pan out initially, but Sonia and Sunny end up meeting by chance years later on a train in India and are immediately attracted to one another.

What we liked: The story, which takes place in the 1990s and is steeped in Indian culture, is actually very relatable. In India, like Egypt, many westernized families still haven’t sorted out exactly what it means to occupy that in-between space of being traditional and progressive, Eastern and Western — and it’s confusing for parents and children alike.

The book speaks to the impossible choices that young people from these types of mixed backgrounds and exposure are facing. It also takes a very nuanced approach to the belief that the East is connected and the West is lonely. At first glance, this might be true, but as the story develops, Desai puts forth the premise that while the West is lonely because of hyper-individualism, the East is also lonely, because the characters are in many ways isolated and unknown within their own families in India, where they are unable to express their individuality.

Our verdict: This is a beautifully written exploration of character, identity, human connection, and belonging. At 670 pages, it’s not a quick read, but we found it to be a deep, relatable read that you can lose yourself in.

WHERE TO FIND IT- It’s available in paperback at both Diwan and Bibliotek.