Kiran Desai's novel, The Inheritance of Loss, has been announced as the winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Her mother, Anita Desai, was shortlisted for the award 3 times (1980, href="http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/prizes/booker/booker1984.html">1984 and href="http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/prizes/booker/booker1999.html">1999) but never won.
Kiran Desai is the first woman to win the award since Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin in 2000.
As noted yesterday, bookmakers had Desai ranked 5th favourite out of the six shortlisted novels.
