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.