BOOKS: Kiran Desai wins Booker Prize

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

• NYT reviews TIOL
• NPR review of TIOL
• BoldType profile
• Sawnet profile

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!

Comments

[ashish dimri]

Kiran,
It is not about writing but the way you managed to attract wannable readers.I also read about you in Indian vernaculars.They all praised you as "a thinking daughter who makes us proud".
Hope you will keep up this creative odyssey.
With regards,
yours
ashish dimri

[Jaya Kamlani]

Kiran,

CONGRATULATIONS on your Man Booker Prize for "The Inheritance of Loss." I am glad to have seen and heard you in person at the SAJA convention this year. Keep on writing and having an impact on people. Good Luck.

-- Jaya Kamlani

[U.S. Negi]

Dear Ms. Kiran Desai,

Ambassador of India to Syria, H.E. Mr. Gautam Mukhopadhaya wants to send you a communication. Could you please send your email address.

U.S.Negi
Secretary to Ambassador
Embassy of India, Syria

[bimal dahal]

Deary
I am hurt to read your imagination—the inheritance of loss -- please avoid racism in your next work.
Bimal

[Priti Agarwal]

Dear Ms. Kiran Desai,

The Eternal Solutions, India's No.1 wellness magazine, provides an excellent platform to communicate messages to the millions of its readers. The magazine provides ample mileage to Brands and also assures greater shelf life.

In this regard, we would love to interview with you for section called SHAKTI. It would be an appreciable cooperation from your side.

Thanks
With Regadrs
Priti Agarwal
09868655813

[Marie MARTIN]

Dear Kiran,

I read about you in a French magazine called "le magazine littéraire". I do not know if you will be coming to the book fair in Paris. I know that lots of Indian writers will be there but I do not know about you.
I am a photographer apart from working with India for the past 18 years in textile. I am going to Delhi often (like every two months).
I have a personal project of collaboration with an Indian writer as you may imagine that most of my photographs are clicked in India, though I am doing photography elsewhere also.
I started exhibiting my photographs and I am working with artists here (paintors, drawers and sculptors).
The reason of contacting you is to possibly study a synergy between your books and my pictures.

Looking forward to your response.

With my best regards.

Marie

[Uday Mukherjee]

Dear Kiran Madam,
I have never been an ardent reader of any type of books, except for magazines.
I accept myself to be one of the luckiests guys to pick up " The Inheritence Of Loss".I just cant exress how I am engrossed into this book and in just two days i am almost in the last few pAGES OF THE BOOK.
By reading thru this book I feel like as if I am really staying in Kalimpong and expressing the feeling. I have personally seen the situations in North east ( Assam ) and hence the feelings are much touchy. I am going to finish the book positively by another one/ two days and shall send you one more feedback.
But at this time nobody can stop me from expressing my compliments for being a great writer.
Thanks & Regards,
Uday Mukherjee
New Delhi
9313866427

[Minoti]

Hello,
I would like to ask you some questions over e-mail for a report. Would it be possible to get your e-mail id.
Warm Regards,
Minoti Sampat

[Vinko]

Dear Kiran,

Happy Birthday!

My name's Vinko. I'm your biggest fan in Croatia.

I wish you all the best for your birthday and want you to know that your writing means a lot to me (whenever I'm down I just read a chapter from Hullabaloo and instantly feel much better).

I hope you're working on your next novel which I will wait even if it takes you ten years to finish it.

Kisses from Zagreb.

[Vinko]

PS.

It's Sep. the 3rd here already.

[panditjugalkishoreshastri]

Kiran:

I am not enamoured of this whole genre of 'immigrant story' literature, perhaps, the only genre immigrants have produced. To me, these books are like flat tires.
Such literature coming out of Haiti, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Japan or China, wouldn't bother me. Even a hunger-pinched Indian from a decent home always had enough education to master 3R's and build on it.
But the failure of a whole generation of writers to strike out into a different style of story is what I question. And that's why I mentioned 3 R's. That would put things within easy access of a writer's imagination. Booker Prize is great, but Pablo Neruda could never be a Clancy or a Rowling. At the Booker though you have some great predecessors. My personal favorite was Dom Moraes. But he won it for poetry. And at 15 or 16 he was the youngest Oxonian ever to get it.
But for writers to wait for Booker Prize instead of creating a global blockbuster in fiction like, Da Vinci Code, is what gets my goat. The author had to take a sabbatical from his teaching job, travel countless miles and collect data. Instead of creating a USER MANUAL for Catholics he created a memorable masterpiece that resonates globally.

I have bought most, if not all, of these 'immigrant' books for a different reason. To support the authors, believe it or not. Whenever I have tried to read one of these I could never get my teeth into it.

It's the familiar landscape and the cast of characters provided by extended families that makes it lugubrious and ponderous. The relatives in those books can swat flies with their ears. If they yawn their ears can disappear behind that mouth. The stories often degenrate into something Roman Polanaskiesque: depression, angst and sense of dark foreboding charging the whole landscape.

I ask you all this just so you can trace the process that persuades you to choose between a story that's safe or one that's a pain in the neck but rewarding at the store shelves. Booker, of course, gives a resume sheen and lustre but wouldn't you rather have created something like harry potter.

I ask this in all humility not driven by any smart ass motivation. I may not like immigrant stories but I am proud of you. Like they say, if you make a habit of small success big one's not too far behind.

MEANTIME, CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR STUPENDOUS ACHIEVEMENT.

[Chittaranjan Datar]

Hello Kiran,

Through all your travel across Continents, I wonder if you remember your childhood days in Koregaon Park, attending Kindergarten school conducted by Ms Doris Mistry @ Commonwealth Apartments, cycling across to play with and fight over moulding clay ! If you do, you would'nt recognise that House anymore OR Koregaon Park or even Poona for that matter. But if you do do lets exchange notes on those early days . Though we've all moved on from those days of innocence, read our ways through school / college exams, got down to doing things we like/ maybe even dislike but need to do ( make a living ) hopefully, we'll find enough motivation and succour in re-living those ol' days !

[DEBI CHATTERJI]

hi kiran
i am starting to read ur books.
i am a big fan coelho and brown.
hope i will start loving yours too
wishing u all the best

devi