Kiran Desai has been awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize for her novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss‘.
She won £50,000 prize after being chosen by a panel of judges. She was among the six shortlisted contenders picked up by the judges and finally grabbed what is known as UK’s leading literary award.
This is second novel of 35 year old Kiran Desai, who is the daughter of renowned novelist Anita Desai who has herself been nominated for Booker Prize but never won it.
The Inheritance of Loss tells a story of an Indian Judge who is Cambridge educated and now lives a reclusive retirement in the foothills of Himalayas. But the arrival of her orphaned teenage grand-daughter and attempts of his cook’s son to keep ahead one step of US immigration department seem to threaten his peace.
Kiran Desai has lived in India till she was 15 and then moved to England to continue her education. She now lives in US but was here in India for a while to write some parts of the novel.
Desai is thrilled after winning this prestigious award and told BBC that, ‘ her win felt like a family endeavor‘.
