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Indian Novelist Kiran Desai Wins Prestigious Booker Prize

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Indian novelist Kiran Desai has become the youngest female writer to win Britain's Man Booker prize - one of the world's most prestigious literary awards.

Desai was selected the winner of the $93,000 prize Tuesday for her novel The Inheritance of Loss.

Judges called it a "magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness, and powerful political acuteness."

It is the story of a retired judge who moves into an isolated and crumbling house in the Himalayas hoping to live in peace when his orphaned granddaughter unexpectedly comes to live with him.

The 35-year-old Desai was born in India and educated in the United States and England. She is the daughter of novelist Anita Desai, who has been nominated for a Booker prize three times.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

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