“A charming, lyrical fable.” - Harper’s Bazaar On this showing she is already a finished article.” - The Sunday Telegraph “There is so much to admire in this charming book, dainty in its construction but ballasted by real emotion, that to call Desai a young writer of promise would do her a disservice. She is a delightfully funny, amiable satirist.” - The Atlantic Monthly a spectacularly fresh vision.” -Reena Jana, San Francisco Chronicle “With remarkably complex characters, unpredictable plot twists and vivid descriptions. The author delineates with such with and bemused affection that they insinuate themselves insidiously in our minds.” -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “A finely tuned fable that attests to the author’s pitch-perfect ear. “So fresh and funny and delicious that it defies comparison.” - The Times (London) “Delectable-with this sprightly first novel, Kiran Desai takes her place among the pack of gifted young Indian writers.” - The Wall Street Journal A syndicate of larcenous, alcoholic monkeys terrorize the pilgrims who cluster around Sampath’s tree, spies and ice-cream vendors and profiteers descend on the town, and none of Desai’s outrageous characters goes unaffected as events spin increasingly out of control. He is just taking the longer route.” No one believes her, until one day Sampath climbs a guava tree in search of peaceful contemplation and becomes unexpectedly famous as a holy man, sending the tiny town of Shahkot into turmoil. “Wait and see! Even if it appears he is going downhill, he will come up on the other side. “But the world is round,” says his grandmother.

After years of failure at school, failure at work, of spending his days dreaming in tea stalls, and singing to himself in the public gardens, it does not seem as if Sampath is going to amount to much. Sampath Chawla was born in a time of drought into a family not quite like other families, in a town not quite like other towns. Now available for the first time as a Grove Press paperback, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard-Desai’s dazzling, much-heralded debut novel-is a wryly hilarious and poignant story of life, love, and family that simultaneously captures the vivid culture of the Indian subcontinent and the universal intricacies of human experience.

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.

Hullabaloo in the guava orchard book