Kiran Desai Becomes Youngest Women To Win Booker Prize

Indian writer Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize considered to be one of the world's most prestigious literary awards for her sweeping novel 'The Inheritance of Loss' making her the youngest woman author ever to scoop the £50,000 honor.

Her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, a story rich with sadness about globalization and with joy at the small surviving intimacies of Indian village life, had always been a favorite in the race among the five other contestants.

The Booker Prize, founded in 1969, rewards the best book of the year by a writer from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country.

The 35-year-old author, daughter of well-known Indian novelist Anita Desai - to whom The Inheritance of Loss is dedicated - is the youngest woman to win the award, eclipsing the works of five other short-listed authors.

Educated in India, England and the United States, Desai published her first novel, in 1998.

The previous youngest woman winner had been Desai's fellow Indian Arundhati Roy who won the prize in 1997 when a month short of her 36th birthday.