Thursday, October 12, 2006
Booker Prize Winner Announced
From the website of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction:Youngest ever woman wins Man Booker Prize at age of 35
Kiran Desai. . . named the winner of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Inheritance of Loss. . . .
The Indian-born writer has a strong family tie with the prize as her mother Anita Desai has been shortlisted three times since 1980 but has never won. This year, however, her daughter, Kiran, has won the acclaimed literary prize.
Author of the 1998 universally praised Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Desai is the first woman to win the Man Booker since 2000 when Margaret Atwood scooped the prize with The Blind Assassin. Her winning book, The Inheritance of Loss, is a radiant, funny and moving family saga and has been described by reviewers as ‘the best, sweetest, most delightful novel’. . . .
Over and above her prize of £50,000, Kiran Desai is guaranteed a huge increase in sales and recognition worldwide. . . .
[About the novel:]
In the north-eastern Himalayas, at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga, in an isolated and crumbling house, there lives an embittered old judge, who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and the son of his chatty cook trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from easy.
When a Nepalese insurgency threatens the blossoming romance between Sai and her handsome tutor, they, too, are forced to consider their colliding interests. The judge must revisit his past, his own journey and his role in this grasping world of conflicting desires - every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal.
Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, and was educated in India, in England, and the United States. Kiran studied creative writing at Columbia University. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss.
[permalink] posted by Memphis Reads : 10:36 AM
