Click to play videoI'm delighted to tell you that the Man Booker Prize for 2006 for fiction is awarded to Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss."
New Delhi: When Chairwoman of the Judges of the Man Booker prize Hermione Lee announced Desai as the winner, it made Desai the youngest woman author ever to scoop the £50,000 honour.
Her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, a story rich with sadness about globalisation and with joy at the small surviving intimacies of Indian village life, had always been a favourite in the race among the five other contestants.
“I was very conscious of the emotional territory that I wanted to capture, in terms of the story, I didn't know at all what it was going to be, I think I wrote in every direction - the story of immigrants in New York, my parents, my grandparents, my journey. But yes, I was aware of the certain sort of emotional landscape, darkness, worry and fear that this journey between east and west causes,” she said.
”I was very conscious of the emotional territory that I wanted to capture, in terms of the story, I didn't know at all what it was going to be, I think I wrote in every direction” – Kiran Desai |
After a session that lasted two hours, the panel chose Desai's novel over: In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar, The Secret River by Kate Grenville, Carry Me Dow by M J Hyland, Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters.
Hermione Lee, chairwoman of the judges and Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at Oxford, said: "This is a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness."
She emphasised that the judges felt strongly about all six books, and that Desai's novel was not a "compromise" choice. "We so much admired all these novels," she said.
The achievement was all the more extraordinary considering that Peter Carey, the Australian best-selling novelist, had initially been tipped to break records by winning for a third time.
The 35-year-old author, daughter of well-known Indian novelist Anita Desai - to whom The Inheritance of Loss is dedicated - is the youngest woman to win the award, eclipsing the works of five other short-listed authors.
Educated in India, England and the United States, Desai published her first novel,
The prize, founded in 1969, rewards the best book of the year by a writer from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country.
It guarantees the winner instant literary fame and a place in the bestseller lists around the globe. Other Indian winners include Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie.
”This is terrific news. It's great to see a bright young Indian author honoured in this way and I am very pleased. It's a tribute to an individual quality of an individual writer. All Indian writers will be bucked up today” - Shashi Tharoor to CNN-IBN |
Accepting the award at a ceremony at the Guildhall in London, Desai, a student of creative writing at Columbia University in America, said: "I didn't expect to win. I don't have a speech. My mother told me I must wear a sari... a family heirloom, but it's completely transparent!"
After thanking her publisher, editor and agent, she added: "I'm Indian and so I'm going to thank my parents."
Of her mother, Anita Desai, 69, she said: "I owe a debt so profound and so great, that this book feels as much hers as it is does mine. It was written in her company and in her wisdom and kindness in cold winters in her house... One minute isn't enough to convey it."
It is in sharp contrast to her mother's 40 years of writing experience. The elder Desai has won five different awards and written 14 novels three of which have been nominated for the Booker Prize, the last in 1999. One was turned into the Merchant Ivory film in Custody.
Kiran Desai came to live in England as a teenager for a year before moving to America. The novel, which took eight years to write, draws on Desai's experience of leaving India.
It is set in the north-eastern Himalayas and New York, and is about an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace. It interweaves his story with that of his orphaned teenage granddaughter, his cook and his dog.
The Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes in literature which aims to reward the best writing published in Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. It has a prize of £50,000 as well as the £2,500 awarded to each of the six short listed authors.
The Booker Prize was founded in 1969 and was renamed when the financial services company Man Group PLC began sponsoring.
The bookmakers had initially dismissed the younger Desai as the 7/1 outsider. The judges - the poet and novelist Simon Armitage, the novelist Candia McWilliam, the critic Anthony Quinn and the actress Fiona Shaw - felt differently.
Desai also eclipsed the veteran South African Nadine Gordimer, who had won 32 years ago, and established British writers such as David Mitchell. Instead, from a total of 112 entries, the judges went for six authors who are yet to become household names.
Rodney Troubridge, of Waterstone's, leading book store, said that the prizewinning book '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.
"Kiran Desai's wonderful novel will be snapped up by Waterstone's customers - it's a great winner.".
"The Booker does not often reward debut or not-yet established writers, so Desai can be particularly proud to have beaten bigger names, or indeed the favourites who did not make the shortlist," Rodney said.
Kes Nielsen, of Amazon.co.uk, said: "This well-deserved recognition just confirms Desai's talent."
Others had mixed feelings. John Sutherland, chairman of last year's Booker judges, said: "It is a really good novel, but it needs to be given a good going-over by a good editor."
Last year the award went to The Sea, by John Banville, whose sales have now topped a quarter of a million.
Three novels of Anita Desai, who did not attend last night's event, have reached the Booker shortlist, though she has yet to win the prize. She was shortlisted in 1980, 1984 and 1999.
(With PTI inputs)
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