Indian-born novelist Kiran Desai triumphed last night by winning the ?50,000 (US$92,794) Man Booker prize with her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, a story rich with sadness about globalization and with joy at the small surviving intimacies of Indian village life.
Desai beat the bookies -- who had put her fifth out of six in the award shortlist, rating her as a 5/1 outsider against odds of 6-4 on Sarah Waters' The Night Watch, the favorite.
And at her first attempt Desai, 37, not only became the youngest woman to win but achieved a victory which repeatedly eluded her mother. The esteemed Indian novelist Anita Desai -- to whom The Inheritance of Loss is dedicated -- has been shortlisted for the prize three times.
This year's head judge, Hermione Lee, left no doubt that it was "the strength of the book's humanity" which gave it the edge after a long and passionate debate among the panel.
"It is a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness, " Lee said. "Her mother will be proud of her."
John Sutherland, chairman of last year's Man Booker judges and author of How to Read a Novel, said: "Desai's novel registers the multicultural reverberations of the new millennium, with the sensitive instrumentality of fiction, as Jhabvala and Rushdie did in previous eras.
"The setting moves between the Himalayas and the skyscrapers of New York -- and it wins Britain's premier fiction prize. It is a globalized novel for a globalized world," he added.
"This 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," Rodney Troubridge, buyer for the bookshop chain Waterstone's, said.
"This wonderful novel will be snapped up by our customers -- it's a great winner," he added.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was