News & Reviews

WORD: Kiran Desai youngest woman to win Booker Prize for novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’

Underdog writer Kiran Desai became the youngest woman ever to win Britain’s best-known literary award, the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, at age 35. In addition to her prize of 50,000 pounds -- about $90,000 in U.S. dollars -- Desai is guaranteed a huge increase in sales and recognition worldwide for her novel The Inheritance of Loss.

Indian-born Desai was a steep underdog to win the Booker Prize in the U.K., where gamblers bet on the annual award like Americans do sporting events. According to bookmaker William Hill, Desai was a 5/1 underdog and beat out the odds-on favorite Sarah Waters, who paid 6/4 (bettors could win $6 for every $4 wagered). Other short listed authors included 4/1 underdog Edward St Aubyn, Kate Grenville at 9/2, M.J. Hyland at 5/1 and Hisham Matar who was listed as a 6/1 dog.

Author of the 1998 highly praised debut novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Desai is the first woman to win the Man Booker since 2000, when Margaret Atwood bagged the prize with The Blind Assassin.

The Inheritance of Loss, described by judges as "a radiant, funny and moving family saga" set in rural India as well as among illegal immigrants in the streets of Manhattan, is published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and Grove Press in the United States.

"We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2006 is Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness. The winner was chosen, after a long, passionate and generous debate, from a shortlist of five other strong and original voices," said Chair of the judges Hermione Lee in a press release.

Themes of immigration and exile seemed to dominate this year’s short list. Other authors who covered similar themes include Hisham Matar, whose novel In the Country of Men (Viking) is about a 9-year-old boy enduring violence in Libya in 1979; and Kate Grenville, whose book The Secret River (Canongate) is about a British criminal who finds a new life in Australia in the 19th century.

Ireland's John Banville won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction last year, for his novel The Sea (Picador). 

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