Kiran Desai’s India is an imagined country. After all, she had left its shores as a schoolgirl of 14. But, as she once put it, what is a country but the idea of it? Somewhere, like a pinch of cumin, it can continue to flavour the literary palate, long after one has left its shores.

Her first book — Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard — was an exposition of a very modern sensibility making compact with old fable. She has said somewhere that when she started writing it she had no idea what the story would be; that she had to teach herself how to write as she was writing it. The Inheritance of Loss came eight years later. It may have taken a while, but there was a new sure-footedness about the work, a maturing of vision. It provided a serious critique of a vulnerable, post-9/11 world, without the heavy hand of didacticism.

With these two very different books behind her, it is difficult to gauge where Kiran Desai is heading. But she can do no better than take her mother’s advice and Anita Desai, who made it thrice to the Booker shortlist, should know: “Everyone else gets excited, but in the end you have to get on with your next book.’’