Kiran Desai
Indian author (born 1971)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kiran Desai is an Indian author. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize[1] and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.[2] In 2015, The Economic Times named her one of 20 most influential global Indian women.[3]
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Kiran Desai | |
|---|---|
Desai reading on behalf of Salman Rushdie at the 2024 National Book Awards finalist reading | |
| Born | September 3, 1971 New Delhi, India |
| Education | Bennington College, Hollins University, Columbia University |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Relatives | Anita Desai (mother) |
| Writing career | |
| Period | 1998–present |
| Notable works | |
| Notable awards | Man Booker Prize 2006 |
Early life and education
Kiran Desai is the daughter of author Anita Desai.[4] Desai was born in New Delhi,[5] then lived in Punjab and in Mumbai,[6] where she studied at Cathedral and John Connon School.[7]
Desai left India at 15,[8] and she and her mother lived in England for a year before moving to the United States.[4] She studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia University.[9]
Literary career
Desai's first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998.[10] It won the Betty Trask Award, a prize given by the Society of Authors for best new novels by citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35.[11]
Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), is set in the Himalayas and explores themes of identity, culture clash, and colonialism.[12][8] It won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.[2] Desai became the youngest woman to win the Booker Prize at the time, at age 35.[13]
In 2008, Desai was a guest on Private Passions, a biographical music discussion programme hosted by Michael Berkeley on BBC Radio 3.[14] In 2007, she was the featured author at the inaugural Asia House Festival of Cold Literature.[15]
In 2008, the Gates Foundation invited Desai to report on a community of sex workers in the coastal state of Andhra Pradesh. In 2009, she received the Columbia University Medal for Excellence.[16] Desai was awarded a 2013 Berlin Prize fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.[15][17]
In 2017, Desai said that she had been working for more than a decade on a new book "about power [...] about a young Indian woman out in India and the world".[18] After a break of nearly two decades, her novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was published in 2025 by Hogarth, an imprint of Random House Publishing Group.[19][20][21][22][23] In September 2025, the novel was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.[24]
Bibliography
- Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. Faber and Faber. 1998. ISBN 0-571-19336-6.
- The Inheritance of Loss. Hamish Hamilton. 2006. ISBN 0-241-14348-9.
- The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Hamish Hamilton. 2025. ISBN 9780307700155.
