Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai is an Indian author born in Delhi, the daughter of author Anita Desai. She lived in Punjab and Mumbai, attending Cathedral and John Connon School, before leaving India at age fourteen. She spent a year in England with her mother, then moved to the United States, where she studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia University. Her debut novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998) won the Betty Trask Award. Her second novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006), set in the Himalayas and exploring themes of identity, culture clash, and colonialism, won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award, making her the youngest woman to win the Booker at age thirty-five. After a long hiatus, her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was published in 2025 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.