
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Pre-order for $28.80
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
By:
-
Kiran Desai
About this listen
A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss
“A spectacular literary achievement. I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever.”—Ann Patchett
“A novel so wonderful, when I got to the last page, I turned to the first and began again.”—Sandra Cisneros
“Devastating, lyrical, and deeply romantic . . . an unmitigated joy to read.”—Khaled Hosseini
“A grand and stirring love story, written in exquisite prose.”—Namwali Serpell
“Magnificent . . . A masterpiece.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart.
Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.
©2025 Kiran Desai (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny achieves the ultimate of what a book should do: carry us away into other peoples’ lives, thinking as they think, feeling as they feel, until it comes around and shows us to ourselves. Grand, magnificent, intimate, more than wonderful, this is a novel you will hold close to your heart. I certainly did. I cannot recommend it enough.”—Andrew Sean Greer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“What sheer delight! I haven’t read a book that buoyed my soul this much in a very long time—such light, such lightness, such lightness of touch; such beauty, humor, and generosity of spirit. A grand and stirring love story, written in exquisite prose: it softly bombarded me and broke about my heart.”—Namwali Serpell
“Kiran Desai reveals the breadth and depth of time, how it weighs on families and nations caught within the drama of history. She captures this with a rare and astute sensitivity that, no matter her subject, casts a light on our present.”—Hisham Matar
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Inheritance of Loss
- By: Kiran Desai
- Narrated by: Meera Simhan
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives on his doorstep. The judge's chatty cook watches over her, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, hopscotching from one New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS, forced to consider his country's place in the world. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai's new-sprung romance with her handsome Nepali tutor, they, too, are forced to confront their colliding interests.
-
-
Brilliant book. Outstanding Performance.
- By Patrick Keyes on 05-21-25
By: Kiran Desai
-
The South
- A Novel
- By: Tash Aw
- Narrated by: Windson Liong
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they’ve inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought. Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.
By: Tash Aw
-
Will There Ever Be Another You
- A Novel
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Patricia Lockwood
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together – of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and “WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME” plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are. Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she’ll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people?
-
Heart, Be at Peace
- A Novel
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Anne Marie Ryan, Ciaran O'Brien, Donal Ryan, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them
By: Donal Ryan
-
My Beloved Life
- A Novel
- By: Amitava Kumar
- Narrated by: Amitava Kumar
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jadunath Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell’s birthplace, Jadu’s mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again, he is in college, meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places.
-
-
Profoundly moving
- By Kani on 12-22-24
By: Amitava Kumar
-
The Girls Who Grew Big
- A Novel
- By: Leila Mottley
- Narrated by: AhDream Smith, Erin Spencer, Khaya Fraites
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.
-
-
beautiful writing!
- By Shenelle Williams on 07-07-25
By: Leila Mottley
-
The Inheritance of Loss
- By: Kiran Desai
- Narrated by: Meera Simhan
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives on his doorstep. The judge's chatty cook watches over her, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, hopscotching from one New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS, forced to consider his country's place in the world. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai's new-sprung romance with her handsome Nepali tutor, they, too, are forced to confront their colliding interests.
-
-
Brilliant book. Outstanding Performance.
- By Patrick Keyes on 05-21-25
By: Kiran Desai
-
The South
- A Novel
- By: Tash Aw
- Narrated by: Windson Liong
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they’ve inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought. Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.
By: Tash Aw
-
Will There Ever Be Another You
- A Novel
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Patricia Lockwood
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together – of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and “WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME” plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are. Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she’ll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people?
-
Heart, Be at Peace
- A Novel
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Anne Marie Ryan, Ciaran O'Brien, Donal Ryan, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them
By: Donal Ryan
-
My Beloved Life
- A Novel
- By: Amitava Kumar
- Narrated by: Amitava Kumar
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jadunath Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell’s birthplace, Jadu’s mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again, he is in college, meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places.
-
-
Profoundly moving
- By Kani on 12-22-24
By: Amitava Kumar
-
The Girls Who Grew Big
- A Novel
- By: Leila Mottley
- Narrated by: AhDream Smith, Erin Spencer, Khaya Fraites
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.
-
-
beautiful writing!
- By Shenelle Williams on 07-07-25
By: Leila Mottley