So we have now Desai after the delectable Arundhati Roy - the youngest woman to have won Britain's own version of the Novel prize for literature.

Congratulations are in order!

Look forward to knowing more about Sai's Nepali rebel lover!

Read on: http://books.guardian.co.uk/manbooker2006/story/0,,1892438,00.html

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First-timer beats the odds to take Booker prize that eluded her mother

• Desai's daughter says 'it's her book as much as mine'
• Judge hails east-west novel's humane breadth

John Ezard
Wednesday October 11, 2006
The Guardian
The Indian-born novelist Kiran Desai triumphed last night by winning the £50,000 Man Booker prize with her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, a story replete with sadness over globalisation and with pleasure at the surviving intimacies of Indian village life.
She beat the bookies, who put her fifth out of six in the award shortlist, rating her as a 5/1 outsider, compared with odds of 6-4 on Sarah Waters' The Night Watch, the favourite.
At her first attempt Desai, 35, not only became the youngest woman to win but achieved a victory which repeatedly eluded her mother. The esteemed Indian novelist Anita Desai - to whom The Inheritance of Loss is dedicated - has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker.
On hearing the result Desai said: "The debt I owe to my mother is so profound that I feel the book is hers as much as mine. It was written in her company and in her wisdom and kindness."
This year's head judge, Hermione Lee, left no doubt that it was "the strength of the book's humanity" which gave it the edge after a long and passionate debate among the judges. "It is a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness," Professor Lee said. "Her mother will be proud of her."
John Sutherland, chairman of last year's Man Booker judges and author of How to Read a Novel, said: "Desai's novel registers the multicultural reverberations of the new millennium with the sensitive instrumentality of fiction, as Jhabvala and Rushdie did previous eras ... It is a globalised novel for a globalised world."
But, he said, his favourite on the shortlist was Edward St Aubyn's Mother's Milk.
Rodney Troubridge, buyer for the bookshop chain Waterstone's, said Desai's win "continues the fine tradition of Booker winners set in India, such as Heat and Dust, Staying On, The God of Small Things, and Midnight's Children. It's a great winner".
Desai spent seven years writing the novel. The loss in her title is chiefly the loss of faith in India felt among the legions who overstay tourist visas and become illegal immigrants in the US. Her story counterpoints the lives of an embittered old judge, a survivor of British colonial rule, with those of his loyal cook and the cook's son, one of the immigrants who scrabbles for subsistence on developing world pay in New York.
Desai has said in interviews that her title "speaks of little failures, passed down from generation to generation.
"The novel tries to capture what it means to live between east and west. It explores what happens when a western element is introduced into a country that is not of the west, which is what happened, of course, during colonial times and is happening again with India's new relationship with the States."
Announcing the longlist of 19 books on August 14, Prof Lee said: "It's a list in which famous established novelists rub shoulders with little known newcomers."
On September 14, when the shortlist of six titles was published, it became evident that she and her fellow-judges had done something rare in the 38-year annals of Booker: they had dumped the famous writers and picked mainly little-known newcomers.
Hisham Matar (with his first novel, In The Kingdom of Men), Desai, and MJ Hyland (with her second novel Carry Me Down) sprang from almost nowhere to be strong contenders for the world's foremost literary award. Out went Peter Carey, a previous double Booker laureate, his chance of a third title for Theft: A Love Story destroyed. Discarded too was the bookies' favourite, David Mitchell, with his fourth novel Black Swan Green.
But the publishing market treats novelists as promotable contenders with their first and second books, mature talents by their third, and burned out with their fourth and subsequent titles. This year's passed-over favourite, The Night Watch, was a fourth novel.
Few of those who have read all the titles disagree that the relative newcomers Matar, Desai, Hyland, and St Aubyn were sound choices. The question left by the contest is whether new talent is in danger of being overexposed too soon.
The other shortlisted novelist was Kate Grenville for The Secret River.
Apart from Prof Lee, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature and Fellow of New College, Oxford, the judges were: Simon Armitage, poet and novelist; Candia McWilliam, novelist and former winner of the Guardian fiction prize; the critic Anthony Quinn; and the actor Fiona Shaw.

Jolly good Bostongirl :-) You hit the nail in the right place there.

Rushdie and Roy asides, there is one more name who wrote and writes about the subcontinent:
V. S Naipaul.

The bearded Oxonian who won the Booker for his 'In a Free State' many moons ago. And what do we have to say to that? hmm...
Carpe diem

okay theory no 2 (equally infuriating!)

3 of the five judges were females. they have a soft spot for desai coz her mum never won even though she had 3 nominations.

She won coz the judges were sympathetic to her (and her mum of course).

That reminds me.....

disco...dancer....disco....dancer....

I am a disco dancer

dhan tan tan tan

I am a disco dancer

jindagi mera gana

main kisika diwana


Anyway, to get back to the topic.

Saley.... tyo bhatini Desai... hamrai muluk ma basera, hamrai hawa pani ma hurkera, hamrai pathshala ma padhera, ahiley hamrai daju-bhai haruko beijjat garche... nakachari.

Tara, who gives a s#it. She must've make good impression if she won the prize, irregardless who the judges are.

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Source: http://books.guardian.co.uk/manbooker2006/story/0,,1920237,00.html

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A passage from India

Kiran Desai's Booker-winning novel tracks back and forth from the Himalayas to Manhattan. Just like the author, in fact. But rediscovering her Indian-ness was vital to her success, she tells Laura Barton

Thursday October 12, 2006
The Guardian


Kiran Desai: 'I see everything through the lens of being Indian ... I can't really write without that perspective.' Photograph: Guardian/Eamonn McCabe



One day in mid-September, Kiran Desai went looking for herself. The Man Booker Prize shortlist had just been announced, and her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, was among the final six, along with works by Kate Grenville, MJ Hyland, Hisham Matar, Edward St Aubyn, and Sarah Waters - none of which she had read. Desai left her apartment in Brooklyn and headed to the largest bookshop she knew. "To the big Barnes and Noble. And none of the books were there," she says with a prickle of surprise. "Including my own."

Article continues

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It was only a few days ago that Desai finally met her fellow nominees. She arrived in London via the Frankfurt bookfair and a reading tour of Germany on which she was accompanied by a glamorous German-Iranian actress serving as a translator who kept her up late, drinking in Leipzig. "So I crawled on to the plane, went straight to Hatchards and met all the authors, which was very nice." She strikes the word nice so hard that it somehow rings true.
It was, one gathers, all such a muddle of time zones and red wine and literary fiction, that when her name was announced as the winner on Tuesday evening, she was doubly shocked. "I was very surprised. I was very surprised." She says it twice, as if to cement the thought in her head. "I don't think you can ever expect to win." She resisted the urge to look at the bookmakers' odds. "Was I last? Second last? It's so funny really, isn't it? Suddenly you are a horse, and friends are calling up saying, 'Eat your oats and apples and don't break your leg or a hoof!'"

This morning she sits eating her eggs Benedict neatly, looking faintly bewildered. "I didn't sleep at all," she says. "I drank lots of champagne and then tried to sleep for three or four hours and didn't manage to." Her phone, she says, is "full of messages from three continents" and she has yet to even speak to her parents. There is an added charm to Desai's win, as her mother, Anita Desai, has been nominated for the prize three times. "I hope she has heard," says Desai. "But she's living in a house without a phone."

Desai's hunt for herself on the shelves of a New York bookstore, and the circuitous route to claim her prize, are curiously apt. The Inheritance of Loss is a sprawling novel that runs from the Himalayas to New York city, taking in Marks & Spencer knickers, Grand Marnier and Nepalese insurgents along the way, and offers an insightful and often humorous commentary on multiculturalism and post-colonial society.

One wonders, therefore, whether she felt altogether comfortable accepting the Man Booker prize, considering the inherently colonial nature of the award. "Mmmm, I know," she nods. "Someone said to me, 'Will you turn down the Booker prize because it is a commonwealth prize?' And I said 'I'm not crazy!' It's also a hedge fund, so you have big-business qualms about that. There's all kinds of reasons to turn it down."

Did she seriously contemplate doing so? "Nooo! NO! Because you can drag that ethical dilemma into every single aspect of your life - and that is very much what my book is about. You are unable to make any kind of rule, really, without it being messy and mixed up with the rest of the world, and mixed up with sad and difficult things. Would I buy this sweater? Where is it made? It's by someone poor in China and someone horrible is making money out of it. Am I going to eat this bit of fruit picked by whom? It infects every single thing. But I stand by the book's ethical sense, and it's a book that certainly says the opposite of many things that flags stand for."

Desai, who is 35, lived in India until she was 14, when she and her mother left first for the UK and then for the US, where she has lived ever since. However, she still holds on to her Indian passport. "Now I could become an American citizen, but then George Bush won and I've just been unable to bring myself to do so," she explains, half-apologetically. "But again that's silly because of course I pay taxes there and don't vote, so it's hypocritical in a way, but it held me back."

Increasingly, too, she is unsure that she would really want to surrender her Indian citizenship. "I feel less like doing it every year because I realise that I see everything through the lens of being Indian. It's not something that has gone away - it's something that has become stronger. As I've got older, I have realised that I can't really write without that perspective."

It was only when she began writing about the immigrant experience in New York that she realised she would have to return to India. "And then, of course, I find myself at a disadvantage because India has changed, moved on. I go every year, yet it belongs to Indian authors living in India. The subject belongs to them. So the only way I could put this book together was to go back to the India of the 1980s, when I left."

It is this feeling of being caught between two continents that infuses The Inheritance of Loss. At times, it appears to rejoice in the intermingling of cultures; at others it seems to inspire a wistful melancholy. Does Desai feel liberated or limbo-ed by her odd dual citizenship? "Both." She laughs, a wriggling laugh. "In many ways it's incredibly lucky, enriching, to see both sides. On the other hand I do worry. You think, what's next? This book is made up of many little bits and pieces, of half-stories, and immigrants in a basement you just see briefly as you pass by. So I do think, will I ever have an entire story to tell?" The advantage is that she feels she could settle almost anywhere. "I feel as comfortable anywhere as I feel uncomfortable anywhere," she says.

Just as she has faltered in accepting American citizenship, she has been unwilling to embrace the American style of writing. Having attended a creative writing course at Columbia University, of which she says her first novel Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard was a product, she decided to start afresh. "It was very hard for me to write like that," she explains. "They demand you write a certain way because you have to present your work in half-hour instalments. You are having to polish only a little bit of it. It suits the short story more than the novel.

"You certainly can't sit there with the big, huge monster [novel] and function in any kind of way as an American writer, because you are constantly having to make grant applications, and you either have to exit that world or your work must change."

Desai chose to exit. "I didn't apply for grants or writers' centres, I didn't join writers' groups. I just couldn't do it. It didn't seem an honest way to write to me. When you write on your own, you can write the extremes. No one else is watching and you can really go as far as you need to."

Instead she lived on her advance, stretching it further by moving to Mexico for a while, occupying small rooms in overcrowded houses in New York. She did not expect, however, that she would have to live like this for eight years until the book was finished. The end came, she admits, partly out of financial necessity. "I was very poor, and everyone in my family was saying, 'Oh, you're going to have to get a job.' My mother was the one person who stood by the book, but everyone else was saying 'It's awful, you really have to be responsible, you must get a job, you have to get health insurance!'"

In a few hours Desai will leave her anonymous hotel in central London and take a plane to Frankfurt. A few days later she will head to New York. One wonders where in her heart she would like to be celebrating right now. She does not hesitate: "I would like to be in India." She smiles broadly. "Because they care for the Booker so much. Sometimes it means something in America and sometimes it doesn't. It would have been a lot of fun to be in Delhi, with lots of family and all the generations." Her tiny hands grip her knife and fork tightly, and she suddenly looks terribly small and lost.

Disco dancer, you pointed out what you think is an 'infuriating' fact and it is boiling my blood. If you are here to have an honest discussion about the book, then by all means...feel free to tell us what you think. You obviously dont have any interested in constructive criticism. You have something against women and Indians? And the British aristocrats? and TEA??? You still havent told us what you think is so not worthy about the book that the Booker prize wasnt deserved. Or why Booker prize holds no value.

If the judges were not British, tea-drinkers, aristocrats, colonizers, and women, would you say the same thing?? And if Kiran Desai's mother was not a writer herself, would have said the same thing? Just tell me what do you think the judges get by picking X writer vs. Y. They have passed up writers whose mother tongue is English to pick this girl and has a thought ever crossed your mind that maybe the book was GOOD??

Obviously, you are very biased and you won't read a book written by an Indian, a women at that..and specially a book that won the Booker prize, coz it was decided by majority of the women who are British- tea-drinking-aristrocrats. Do you think that literature is sometimes able to overcome all those social stigma and really portray a STORY, even if it is fictional? Salman Rushdie won the Booker of the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children. Well, he is Indian by birth. Do you think he wont the award coz he has been a British citizen for a long time and he speakes with British accent?? Or was it coz he was not a woman and maybe the judges were all men too? Despite all that...the book is all based in India.....oh, thats right..the judges must have been reminded of the glorious past...wait a minute! the book doesnt talk about pre-independence India at all coz the protagonist was born on the exact second of the Independence. Hmmm.

theory no 3 ( after u've finished reading this, i know u will kill someone!)

the judges r ignorant of the way of life in the 3rd world. Desai gives them such a skewed glimpse of the dirty, filthy, cannibalisitic environment(the 3rd world) we live in that it makes the judges feel that they, the western world r living in some kind of utopia.

it gives the judges a false sense of confidence n happines in their existence which is in such a contrast with the life of an ordinary person in a developing world.

easy picking the winner, go kill someone!

Why would I go kill someone just because YOU lack logical reasoning? That would be completely irrational thing for a rational person like me to do. And you can come with hundred other theories, but whats the point if all them are biased and illogical? May I also point out that all your theories have the same theme, just worded differently? Its about the British (1st world country, rich, aristocratic and blissfully unaware of the realities of the world) deciding something because they are guilty or fond of certain things (past memory, women writer, Indian writer).
I am not arguing with you because doing that would be complete waste of time as you cannot come up with a valid reason, just your biased assumptions. But when I see something so whack, I do notice and give rational criticsm.

I read the book and enjoyed it. I felt she did a fantastic job of potraying reality: whether it was about Kalimpong at the height of the Gorkhaland movement or her vivid descriptions of underclass life in New York or of being an Indian in pre-independence India and pre-war England. Her characterizations, narrative and easy style were superb in my opinion. I absolutely think the book was worthy of the award.


Also, one other point, she potrays Nepalis, or 'Gorkhas' as many of the characters in her book called themselves, in the eyes of Bengalis, which I think is fair game even though it may not be to the liking of some. It is a fact of life that many 'Gorkhas' at that time were not too well off. For a writer who displayed a remarkable understanding of her characters - Nepali, Bengali and English - I find it hard to belive there was any intentional malice in her writing. She was telling it as she saw it. That's what makes great writers in my opinion.

Also, in my opinion, the unifying theme in the book is less about colonialism, and more about personal choices and failures.

She is no VS Naipaul.

"She is no VS Naipaul"

Agreed. But at 35 she sure has the potential to be. Also, I don't think it's useful, at least to me, to compare the two. Naipaul grew up with colonialism and its legacy and his work reeks of it. In the case of Desai, at least in this book, it is not as dominant a theme as it is in most if Naipual's book.

My 2 cents.

PS: I love reading Naipual- he is one my favorites too.

Thank you Captain Haddock for your wonderful opinion, and stating that it was not about colonialism. Our friend Disco Dancer is aggresively arguing that the award is tied to the colonial history of Britain.
A great writer is the one who can create wonderful characters. Some like it, some dont..but at least its telling a story. If people are interested in reading some fast track thriller, they have plenty to read. Few books every year will stand out for its literary value. I think this book was one of them.
Kiran Desai is not VS Naipul: for that matter, there is no other VS Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie...and the list goes on. If one writer would merely replicate the writing style of the others, what would that be? They all bring to the table their unique obersvation, writing skills, and story telling. Its a wonderful world where writers with varying degree of depth give us something to read. Some will challenge you, some will make you feel good/bad.

Oh, I also want to point out that Kiran Desai got Booker Prize, VS Naipaul got the Nobel Prize....and I agree that Naipaul has more on his writing credits than Desai. This is only her second book, give her a break! Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer but she writes differently than Desai. I guess these writers bring different things to the table and we can always pick who and what we want to read.

"If one writer would merely replicate the writing style of the others, what would that be? They all bring to the table their unique obersvation, writing skills, and story telling. Its a wonderful world where writers with varying degree of depth give us something to read."

My thoughts exactly!

Also, to be honest, I like Naipual but I am a bit bored with him these days. I have read about half a dozen or so of his works and while the storyline maybe different in each book, the back drop of colonialism and Trinidadian brahminism can get a bit monotonous after a couple of books.

Bostongirl,

To be fair to Discodancer, looks like he or she is doing a little bit of fishing and devils advocating here.

To good life.

"Agreed. But at 35 she sure has the potential to be"

If I am correct, Naipaul wrote his masterpiece, A House for Mr Biswas when he was 29. He has written assloads of book--and frankly I would say that Naipaul definitely is one of the finest writers of the 20th century.
Even the author who authored "Life of Pi" got the prize in 2002, for crying out loud. For all we know, this writer is another one-trick pony; who knows how successful she's gonna be as a writer. Let's also keep in mind that Naipaul also won the coveted prize in the 1970's for a mediocre book, to tell you the truth.

And I don't see Toni Morrison on the list. That's just shocking. How do they select the winners?


"If one writer would merely replicate the writing style of the others, what would that be"

Who's talking about their writing style? There are some writers who are in a league of their own, and Naipaul is one of those writers. Rushdie is another one-trick pony--his only good book is Midnight's Children--the rest should be used as toilet paper. What's so good about The Satanic Verses? The book is a load of gibberish--very hard to decipher, and he has a knack for penning verbose phrases.


Also, I don't see why I have to read Desi writers just because I'm South Asian. I don't think that way.
Once again, we're comparing a Nobel Prize winner to a Booker Prize winner. People who win the nobel prize are cream of the crop. I don't think you win the nobel prize for writng just one book.

I still feel it serves no purpose to compare the two. I have opinions about both and am happy to share them instead as I think doing so adds more to the topic at hand

On Naipual: He certainly has written a lot and written well. I started reading him long before he got the Nobel and have enjoyed many of his books. Incidentally, I enjoyed the Mystic Masseur, Half-a-Life, A Bend in the river much more than a House for Mr Biswas. Perhaps that was because of the hype around the book and the high expectations with which I approached it . But Naipaul has a stature that few can match. The Nobel prize was certainly a crowning glory and very well deserved.

On Desai: She is a very good stroy teller. Will she be another Arundhati Roy who fizzles out after one good book? I hope not because she sure does a heck of a job telling a story. Perhaps I liked the Loss of Inheritance because I could relate to the people and places in the book but it was one of the better books I have read this year.

I am not here to put Naipaul down or pull Desai up - not that I could even if I tried. I just think it's stupid and futile to try and take anything away from a good writer - whether its Naipaul or Kiran Desai.

Also, prizes like these are only one measure of a good author but they are by no means the best measure. Awards like these will always come with the nay sayers and skeptics and will never be to the satisfaction of all. The main thing I care about is that good writers are recognized and in this case I am very confident that one was.

QUOTE
"The end came, she admits, partly out of financial necessity. "I was very poor, and everyone in my family was saying, 'Oh, you're going to have to get a job.' My mother was the one person who stood by the book, but everyone else was saying 'It's awful, you really have to be responsible, you must get a job, you have to get health insurance!'"
UNQUOTE


Three elements.

1. Everyone else around you pretty much says "You have to grow up. You are not doing conventional this or conventional that. You are a failure. Eight years have
been wasted."

2. BUT one strong person stands by you to defend what you do NO MATTER what,
and gives you hope and emotional nourishment in times of uncertainties and even poverty. [It's that persona's support that keeps you going, even when everyone
else says that you are pretty much a failure.]

3. You keep on doing what you do: write, write and write, despite self-doubts.

4. Then, you win this super-prestigious prize which will change your life!

Lovely!!
Heart-warming and Life-affirming!!

I find this sort of success --which has a sort of "A Beautiful Mind" sort of resonance
to it -- much more inspirational than . . .someone's collection of a string of SAFE successes.

I haven't read the book, yet. Will do so soon; meantime,
my best wishes to Ms. Desai, and thanks SL for starting this conversation on Sajha.

oohi
"just another inheritor of hope"
ashu

Ashu ji,
that is precisely what I felt. i have not read the book myself but i truly, honestly and sincerely appreciate the ladies, both mom and daughter, and their mammoth encouragement, persistence and perseverance behind making the novel. as i said, she truly epitomizes women of the 21st century. keep on working, don't worry about the end result!

on a note of levity, i have a huge crush due to sheer respect for her already. Bravo! well done!


LooTe
PS. Critiques and readers almost always tend to have divided opinions.