The Hindu : New Delhi News : Kiran Desai to engage television viewers

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Friday, Apr 20, 2007
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Kiran Desai to engage television viewers

CELEBRITY WRITER: Kiran Desai

Celebrated Indian author Kiran Desai, who last year became the youngest woman to win a Booker Prize, speaks to CNN International's Anjali Rao in "Talk Asia" show this Saturday.

Kiran explains what it is like to be a celebrity author at such a young age. Her award-winning novel, "The Inheritance of Loss", took seven years to write. The 35-year-old writer says her journey to get there was one of self-discovery and a reflection on her experience of living as an immigrant in the United States.

Kiran also tells what it meant to leave her homeland. Her book was not without controversy, however, as she relates her distress at the hate mail she received and the violent protests that erupted in North India in the wake of its publication.

Literary excellence runs in the Desai family as Kiran's distinguished mother Anita Desai was short-listed three times for the Booker Prize. Kiran talks fondly of her close friendship with fellow Indian author Salman Rushdie, a family friend who has helped and advised her on how to deal with even the harshest of critics. The Chandigarh-born author spent her childhood in Pune and Mumbai where she went to the Cathedral and John Connon School. When she was about eight or nine, her family shifted to New Delhi. She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 14. One year later, the family relocated to the United States, where Kiran completed her schooling in Massachusetts. She later attended Bennington College, Hollins University, and then Columbia University, where she took two years off to write her first book, "Hullabaloo In The Guava Orchard".

The interview will be repeated over CNN on Sunday. -- Madhur Tankha

-- Madhur Tankha

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