Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi, India, where she spent her childhood years. She moved to England with her mother, Anita Desai, when she was 14, and later took up residence in the United States, where she studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia Unviersity. Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998 and won the Betty Trask Award, a prize given by the Society of Authors for the best new novels by citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35. Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), obtained very positive reviews and won the 2006 Man Booker Prize as well as the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.