Till mid October, Kiran Desai was a rather low profile - in fact, an almost unknown name - beyond the literary world in India. And in the higher echelons of the world of writers and critics, given her high pedigree, comparisons were inevitable. Author, Anita Desai's daughter was expected to live up to her 'wordy' inheritance. Come October and the Booker Prize has changed all that for the youngest woman winner in the history of the prestigious British literary prize.

It is but natural that Kiran - who lived briefly in England and now divides her time between India and the US - dedicated her prize to her eminent novelist parent who inculcated in her the art of writing a book. "My mother taught me how to read and then how to understand a book.... She also taught me how to write a book because she stressed on discipline." In an earlier interview with Verve, Kiran had candidly commented that she was not afraid of being her mother's daughter. Rather, her work showed that she had incorporated Anita's influence even as she quickly crafted her own unique literary identity. Incidentally, Desai Sr had been nominated thrice for the prestigious prize in the last 26 years, each time for a novel marked by great beauty and sensitivity.

Kiran had taken just one year off to write her debut-making offering, Hullabaloo In The Guava Orchard, but her second creation, The Inheritance Of Loss that won her the Booker, took her seven years to write. Offering a sharp view of globalisation, multi-culturalism, immigrant problems and economic disparities, the book has its share of despair but is enriched by humour too. The writer has gone on record to say that the idea for the novel had sparked off from the same initial story line as her mother's 29-year-old novel, Fire On The Mountain. "I suppose it is not so strange; after all some stories do run in a family," she'd remarked.

Observers have noted how her simple unpretentious style and manner of speaking have underscored her opinions of hybridisation and surrender to an adopted land, all expressed in her work. The writer, who once said, "I understand India in a way that I do not understand America" and feels that she is an Indian who has a life in both places - travelling back and forth - now speaks of journeys and loss in alien environments. Kiran's loneliness is often hinted at but it is an experience that she has put to good creative use. "I can only write when I can be isolated and can retreat," she had once stated candidly. "Some authors can manage the balance of doing tours, meeting with the press and shutting it all off and working. I cannot."