LONDON, OCT. 10, 2006--Kiran Desai has won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for her novel, "The Inheritance of Loss." At 35, she is the youngest woman to win the Booker.
[Please see the resources and other items below. Feel free to post a note to Kiran in the comments section below (requires one-time, free TypePad registration) and we will be sure she sees your comments!]
- Official press release & bio
- Video interview
- BBC interview
- Coverage & comments: Rediff's in-depth coverage | NYT | Ultrabrown | Sepia Mutiny
Reviews & profiles
Kiran Desai is available for interviews; contact Amelia Fairney at Amelia.fairney[at]ukpenguingroup.com
(Photo on the right, April 2006, by Jay Mandal/On Assignment; jaymandal[at]yahoo.com)
The Booker, which has a prize of about $93,000, is England's most prestigious literary award, given each year to the best novel published in the previous 12 months by an author in the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Established in 1968; formal name is Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Among the winners with a South Asian connection are:
- Yann Martel, Life of Pi (2002) - the book has a heavy desi influence
- Arundhati Roy, "The God of Small Things" (1997)
- Michael Ondaatje, "The English Patient (1992)
- Salman Rushdie, "Midnight's Children" (1981)
- Ruth Praver Jhabvala, "Heat and Dust" (1975)
- V.S. Naipaul, "In a Free State" (1971)
In 1994, "Midnight's Children" won a second Booker, "the Booker of Bookers," for the best novel in the first 25 years of the contest.
Feel free to post a note to Kiran in the comments section below (requires one-time, free TypePad registration) and we will be sure she sees your comments!
