Kiran Desai Clinches 2006 Booker Prize

Indian writer Kiran Desai, daughter of renowned author Anita Desai, has won the prestigious British Man Booker Prize for her novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’. The 35-year-old, who put seven years into the book, became the youngest ever female winner of the prestigious 50,000-pound (93,500-dollar) award.

The Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in literature aims to reward the best writing published in Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.

The cross-continental saga set in New York and India with a teenage girl as the protagonist won her the judge’s vote. The judges hailed Kiran’s book as 'a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness.'

The book explores contemporary issues like multiculturalism, fundamentalism and terrorist violence. The novel shows an embittered judge living in the Himalayas whose life is transformed by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter.

She was born in India on Sep 3 1971, and at present is a student of Columbia University's Creative Writing Course. Kiran is the first woman to win the Man Booker prize since 2000 when Margaret Atwood scooped the prize with "The Blind Aassassin."

Delighted on her achievement, Kiran said, "Great relief, after seven years, that's the major emotion I'm feeling." Appreciating the role played by her mother in her success she said, “It had been six or seven years of work and she was my first reader. And I was terrified, of course, for seven years no one had seen it. And I think she was terrified as well, imagine having to break the news that this doesn't work. I think we spent a week in complete terror. She was really wonderful."

Though her mother was nominated for the Booker Prize thrice, she failed to net the title on all three occasions. Whereas, ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ is Kiran’s second writing, first being 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard' (1998). Kiran won the 1998 Betty Trask Award for her work.

Desai beated five other authors, including favorite Sarah Waters to win the 50,000-pound award. The other five books which had made it to the shortlist were Kate Grenville's 'The Secret River' , M J Hyland's 'Carry Me Down' , Hisham Matar's 'In the Country of Men' , Edward St Aubyn's 'Mother's Milk' and Sarah Waters's 'The Night Watch' .