The Hindu : National : Kiran Desai figures on Man Booker shortlist

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Kiran Desai figures on Man Booker shortlist

Hasan Suroor

Daughter hopes to make it where mother failed

LONDON: Will the daughter succeed where her more famous mother failed?

This was the question many were asking on Friday after the young Indian novelist Kiran Desai, daughter of Anita Desai, was shortlisted for the prestigious £ 50,000 Man Booker Prize for her book, The Inheritance of Loss.

The book explores trans-national identities and conflicts in a story set against the backdrop of the movement for an independent Gorkhaland in the 1980s.

Her mother was shortlisted for the same prize three times — in 1980, 1984 and 1999 — but never won it. Will the younger Desai be able to pull it off and bag Britain's most sought-after literary honour when it is presented next month?

Ms. Kiran Desai (35), who divides her time between India, America and Britain, made her debut with Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard in 1998, a delightfully told story of a man who tries to escape the world by seeking refuge on a treetop only to find himself drawn even more into a life he was trying to flee.

Salman Rushdie has said that her second novel ``fulfils the promise of her first,'' and a review in The New York Times hailed it as an ``extraordinary'' exploration of ``globalisation, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence.''

Unlike her mother, who had some big literary heavyweights to contend with in her time, Ms. Desai's rival contenders for the prize are relatively less intimidating. The six-strong shortlist is heavily weighted in favour of new voices — the only big name being Sarah Walters, who has been nominated for The Night Watch, about four Londoners with an interconnected past. Among the serious contenders is Hisham Matar, a 32-year-old Libyan writer, who lives in exile in London and has been nominated for his debut novel In the Country of Men, a semi-autobiographical story of a boy whose father pays the price for resisting Col. Gaddafi's regime. Mr. Matar said he was ``almost dumb with joy'' to have been shortlisted.

Others on the list are: Kate Grenville for The Secret River, Edward St. Aubyn for Mother's Milk and M.J. Hyland for Carry Me Down. Writer Hermione Lee, who chaired the jury, defended the decision to keep out the big names saying they could do without a Booker.

``I feel they're such talented and exceptional writers that they don't need us,'' she said responding to criticism that there were too many ``lightweights'' on the list.

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