The Writer’s Voice

Kiran Desai Reads “An Unashamed Proposal”

The author reads her story from the August 11, 2025, issue of the magazine.
Kiran Desai in black and white next to an orange background with cursive writing on it.
Illustration by The New Yorker; Source photograph by M. Sharkey

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Kiran Desai reads her story “An Unashamed Proposal,” from the August 11, 2025, issue of the magazine. Desai is the author of the novels “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard” and “The Inheritance of Loss,” which won the Booker Prize in 2006. A new novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” from which this story was adapted, will be published this fall.