At its centre are Sonia and Sunny, two young Indians whose lives move between India and America. Their relationship becomes a way of examining family, class, race, ambition, migration and loneliness across generations and geographies. Desai has said that she initially wanted to write about love and loneliness in the modern world, imagining a contemporary romance with an older kind of beauty. As the novel developed across places and generations, however, her conception of loneliness grew wider.
