Kiran Desai wins the 2006 Booker Prize for her novel Inheritance of Loss. Kiran Desai is the daughter of author Anita Desai, who has also received Booker Prize nominations in the past. This is Britain’s biggest literary award. Previous Booker Prize winners are the bestsellers Life of Pi (2002) and Vernon God Little (2003).

The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai

Description:
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s chatty cook watches over her, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, hopscotching from one New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS, forced to consider his country’s place in the world. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai’s new-sprung romance with her handsome Nepali tutor and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they, too, are forced to confront their colliding interests. The nation fights itself. The cook witnesses the hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge must revisit his past, his own role in this grasping world of conflicting desires-every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal.