Exile, Migration, and Hybridity: Themes in Kiran Desai’s Fiction

Abstract

Kiran Desai’s fiction explores identity, exile, migration, and hybridity, offering profound insights into the emotional, social, and cultural dimensions of human displacement. In novels such as Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, characters navigate personal and political exile, experience intergenerational tensions, and negotiate multiple cultural affiliations. Desai portrays migration as both transformative and alienating, highlighting the continuous reconstruction of identity in response to global and local forces. Her narrative strategies, including linguistic hybridity and spatial representations, reflect the liminal positions her characters occupy. Situating her works within postcolonial and diasporic frameworks, this study demonstrates Desai’s contribution to understanding belonging, adaptation, and identity formation in contemporary literature.