Desai, Kiran, << deh SY, KIHR an >> (1971-…), an Indian-born author, won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006). The award, now known as the Booker Prize, is the United Kingdom’s best-known literary award. The prizewinning book is set during the mid-1980’s in a village in the Himalaya region of India as well as in New York City. Through a variety of characters, Desai explores the tensions created by Western colonialism on Asian society and by economic inequality. Although Desai deals in the novel with such serious topics as political revolution, she also injects humor and compassion for characters who struggle to find a secure place in the modern world.
Desai gained international recognition for her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998). The book won the Betty Trask Award, given for the best new novel by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35. The novel centers on a daydreaming young man from an Indian village who eventually decides to live in a tree in a guava orchard. There the young man gains a reputation as a kind of holy wise man.
Desai was born on Sept. 3, 1971, in New Delhi, India. She left India with her family at the age of 14 and spent a year in England before moving to the United States. She graduated from Bennington College in 1993. She also attended Columbia University.
Anita Desai, Kiran’s mother, is also a noted novelist. Anita Desai has had three books reach the short list for the Booker Prize, a list of up to six titles from which the judges select the winner, but she has never won the award.
