Kiran Desai’s first novel in nearly 20 years is shortlisted for the Booker. Last time, she won it

By Vijay Mishra, Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Murdoch University

Kiran Desai’s surname was familiar to the world of literature when her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. Her mother, Anita Desai, was already an accomplished novelist, who had been nominated for the Booker three times. The Inheritance of Loss was hailed as a defining example of both the postcolonial novel and the realist novel of the Indian diaspora: Indians living elsewhere, around the world.

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