RSSKiran Desai wins Man Booker Prize for Fiction
Author Kiran Desai has won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Announced on live television only moments ago in London, this prestigious award has been presented to the youngest-ever female recipient. Desai, who is 35 years old, received the £50,000 award for The Inheritance of Loss. Hermione Lee, chair of the judging panel, praised the novel in her announcement:
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.
Desai’s own mother, Anita Desai, has been shortlisted for the Man Booker since 1980 but has yet to snag the prize herself. Kiran Desai has not only received the award over her mother but, as Lee indicated, also beat out a very respectable 2006 shortlist.