The following version of this book was used to create this guide: Desai, Kiran. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Random House Publishing Group, 2025.

Sonia Shah begins the novel as a college student in the United States, living in a dorm and struggling with isolation. Calls from home in Allahabad remind her of the life she has left behind and of the family network that expects her to move smoothly from education into marriage. As Sonia tries to make herself feel less alone, she becomes involved with Ilan, an older, charismatic artist whose attention at first feels like rescue. Their relationship grows intense and unsettling, and Sonia’s fear and self-doubt deepen rather than disappear.

Back in India, family friends and relatives treat Sonia’s loneliness as a practical problem to be solved, and they circulate her name as a potential match. Around the same time, Sunny Bhatia is living in New York City, working long hours in journalism and sharing a life with Ulla, an American girlfriend he has not fully acknowledged to his family. Sunny’s mother, Babita, maintains a tight hold on his choices from Delhi, measuring his life abroad against her own sacrifices and the social world she understands. When a marriage proposal reaches Sunny, Babita rejects it for reasons that are partly status and partly fear of losing control, and Sunny avoids confronting the question directly because his American life already feels fragile.

Sonia’s trajectory shifts when she returns to India, carrying the weight of what she has lived through abroad and feeling the loneliness of starting over. A death in her family draws people together, and Sunny travels to India with Babita. In Allahabad, Sunny and Sonia meet in the charged atmosphere of mourning and family ritual. Their first real conversation is awkward but vivid, and it becomes clear to both of them that they recognize something in the other person that the earlier matchmaking did not capture.

After Sunny returns to New York, he and Sonia begin corresponding. Sonia starts writing professionally, pitching stories and building a career that lets her move through cities while observing them. Their messages turn into plans, and the book follows their attempts to meet in person despite the pressures around them. Sunny’s life in Queens is defined by night shifts, immigrant neighborhoods, and the constant awareness that his legal status and his work can be taken away. Sonia’s life in Delhi is shaped by her father’s household, by neighbors who monitor her reputation, and by the lingering dread left by Ilan’s hold on her imagination.

Their first sustained time together occurs in Goa, where Sonia is researching a story on the region’s Portuguese past and stays at Casa das Conchas, a decaying mansion filled with relics and haunted histories. Sunny comes to Goa after attending his friend Satya’s wedding, keeping his plans partly hidden from Babita. To fit the expectations of caretakers and outsiders, Sonia and Sunny claim a legitimacy they do not yet have, and the fiction forces them into intimate proximity. They circle each other with desire and caution, trying not to name their former partners, their families, or the ways those pasts might poison what they are building. Gradually, the shared days of writing, swimming, and talking pull them closer, even as Sonia’s fear of betrayal and Sunny’s guilt about his mother keep surfacing.

When they return to Delhi, their relationship collides with the ordinary surveillance of the neighborhood and the demands of Sonia’s father, who insists that Sunny treat Sonia with openness rather than secrecy. Sunny leaves for New York, and Sonia attempts to secure permission to join him in the United States. Her visit to the U.S. embassy becomes a turning point, as the gatekeeping of visas turns their private relationship into an administrative problem that neither of them can solve quickly. Sunny, meanwhile, continues the process of securing his own stability, hoping his employer’s sponsorship will lead to permanent residency.

Because Sonia cannot easily enter the United States, the couple finds ways to meet elsewhere. They reunite in Venice, navigating cheap rooms, tourist crowds, and the uneasy sense that they are borrowing a life that could vanish at any moment. Their time together is tender but tense, shaped by the strain of long separations and by the possibility that Ilan, or the memory of him, is still close enough to disrupt them. After Venice, they split again, Sunny returning to New York and Sonia returning to India, both aware that love has not solved the structural problems surrounding them.

Sunny eventually receives approval for his green card, and the news makes him feel both triumphant and hollow. He delays telling the people closest to him because the document represents not just safety but a widening distance from the life he came from. Babita’s loneliness intensifies as Sunny’s future becomes more secure, and her jealousy hardens into stories that cast Sonia and Sonia’s family as manipulators. Sonia, for her part, continues writing and traveling while caring for her father as his health declines, and she grows tired of waiting for circumstances to align.

The later sections follow Sunny’s increasing restlessness as a journalist whose work depends on moving between worlds that never fully accept him. His reporting and travel carry him beyond New York, and he spends time in Mexico, where he lives precariously and eventually overstays a visa, claiming love as the reason when confronted. At the same time, Babita relocates to Goa and settles at Casa das Conchas with her dog, retreating into heat, memory, and the rituals of food and complaint.

In the final movement, Sunny leaves Mexico and returns to India through Goa. Lost on dark paths and following instinct, he arrives at Casa das Conchas and signals his presence from outside. Sonia and Babita hear him, and Sunny and Sonia face each other again after years marked by separation, fear, and unfinished choices. They recognize how much time has passed and how much damage has been done, but they also recognize the persistence of what first drew them together. The novel ends with their reunion in Goa, with the possibility of a shared life still uncertain but no longer postponed by distance alone.