Origins & Early Life

Kiran Desai is an Indian author. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. In 2015, The Economic Times named her one of 20 most influential global Indian women. Kiran Desai is the daughter of author Anita Desai.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

Desai was born in New Delhi, then lived in Punjab and in Mumbai, where she studied at Cathedral and John Connon School. Desai left India at 15, and she and her mother lived in England for a year before moving to the United States. She studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia University. Desai's first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998. 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.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), is set in the Himalayas and explores themes of identity, culture clash, and colonialism. It won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Desai became the youngest woman to win the Booker Prize at the time...

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