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Winning the Man Booker Prize and that too at the age of 35 is no mean feat. Delhi-born author, Kiran Desai, made us Indians proud by winning the coveted prize for her book The Inheritance of Loss for the year 2006.

Kiran, daughter of well-known author Anita Desai who herself was nominated for the same award three times, became the youngest ever female winner of this award.

Kiran beat five other authors, including favorite Sarah Waters and her book The Night Watch to achieve this feat. She was the unanimous choice of the judges, a rare occurrence in the history of the award. The judges hailed her book as "a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness".

Accepting her award, Kiran praised her mother, to whom she said she owes "a debt so profound and so great that this book feels as much hers as it does mine."

The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran's second novel, tells parallel stories based in post-colonial India and the United States. Her novel brims with the richness found in the remotest corners of the world, but its depiction of globalisation also has a dark side. The illegal immigrant Biju experiences loneliness and isolation in one of the world's busiest cities.

Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998 and received accolades from such notable figures as Salman Rushdie. It went on to win 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.