Booker Prize Winner 2006
KIRAN DESAI WINS MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR PENGUIN
October 11 – TORONTO – Penguin Group (Canada) is thrilled to announce that Kiran Desai has won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for her novel, The Inheritance of Loss. The prize, awarded last night at a ceremony in London, is the first ever Man Booker win for Penguin’s Canadian publishing program. In a few short weeks, Penguin will congratulate Desai in person when she arrives in Toronto for the 27th Annual International Festival of Authors.
The Inheritance of Loss, called ‘a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness” by the Man Booker jury, was released in hardcover in 2005 by Penguin Canada. The paperback release followed in January 2006. Both editions received widespread critical acclaim. Said Penguin Publisher, David Davidar, ‘This incredible novel showcases our commitment not just to publishing the finest Canadian authors, but also to bringing the world’s best books to Canada as part of our domestic publishing program. Besides being a masterpiece of story-telling, Kiran’s novel, like some of the greatest novels of our time engages brilliantly with key political issues such as immigration and globalization that affect us all. ”
Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss immerses readers into life in Kalimpong, a mountain hamlet high in the northeastern Himalayas, nestled among Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. With great emotional depth, hilarity and imagination, Desai illuminates the pain of exile, the consequences of colonialism and the complexity of nationhood and class.
‘There is no mistaking the literary influences on Desai’s exploration of postcolonial chaos and despair,” wrote The New York Times in February, 2006, citing the powerful influence of V.S. Naipaul. Desai’s Booker win places her in the company of influential writers of Indian origin including Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, and her mother, Anita Desai, a three-time Booker Prize nominee.
”To my mother, I owe a debt so profound and so great that this book feels as much hers as it does mine,” Desai said as she accepted her award. ”It was written in her company and in her witness and in her kindness.”
Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, and was educated in India; England; and the United States where she studied creative writing at Columbia University. The Inheritance of Loss is her second novel.