Spring Break
2006 Booker Prize winner visits campus
Kimberly Lien
Issue date: 4/5/07 Section: News
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Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai held a public reading and book signing in front of a crowd of 150 people - including community members, faculty, staff and students - Tuesday evening at the University Theatre.
Desai's first novel, "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard," was a critically acclaimed success, and her second novel, "The Inheritance of Loss," was awarded the Booker Prize in 2006 and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 2007.
She is the youngest woman ever to win the Booker Prize - the most prestigious literary prize in the English-speaking world - said Mitch Berman, director for the Center of Literary Arts.
"Ever since I got the prize," Desai said, "I feel like I'm not even a writer any more. I've just been giving lectures. In a way it's wonderful. I get to travel and see the world. I didn't realize how much it would change my life."
Desai's visit to San Jose State University as the 2007 Martha Heasley Cox Lecturer was presented by the Center for Literary Arts.
The idea to bring Desai to SJSU was brought to Berman's attention by journalist and nonfiction writer Simon Winchester, who taught at SJSU for a semester as Lurie Chair in 2004.
Winchester knew Desai's mother, who is the internationally respected author Anita Desai.
"He felt that if he approached Anita Desai," Berman said, "and I approached Kiran Desai, we'd have a chance of getting (Kiran) to come to campus."
As part of her campus visit, Desai held a public Q-and-A Wednesday at noon in Engineering Building room 189.
Linda Lappin is a graduate student studying fine art who was excited about the chance to see and hear Desai in person.
"I just want to see if she talks the way she writes," Lappin said. "And if she has written poetry, or music, or anything new coming soon. She is so young. We have decades of fantastic literature to look forward to. She is our young female Salman Rushdie - with more love in her lyricism."
Berman has read Desai's work, and enjoyed her distinctive writing style and humor.
Desai's first novel, "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard," was a critically acclaimed success, and her second novel, "The Inheritance of Loss," was awarded the Booker Prize in 2006 and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 2007.
She is the youngest woman ever to win the Booker Prize - the most prestigious literary prize in the English-speaking world - said Mitch Berman, director for the Center of Literary Arts.
"Ever since I got the prize," Desai said, "I feel like I'm not even a writer any more. I've just been giving lectures. In a way it's wonderful. I get to travel and see the world. I didn't realize how much it would change my life."
Desai's visit to San Jose State University as the 2007 Martha Heasley Cox Lecturer was presented by the Center for Literary Arts.
The idea to bring Desai to SJSU was brought to Berman's attention by journalist and nonfiction writer Simon Winchester, who taught at SJSU for a semester as Lurie Chair in 2004.
Winchester knew Desai's mother, who is the internationally respected author Anita Desai.
"He felt that if he approached Anita Desai," Berman said, "and I approached Kiran Desai, we'd have a chance of getting (Kiran) to come to campus."
As part of her campus visit, Desai held a public Q-and-A Wednesday at noon in Engineering Building room 189.
Linda Lappin is a graduate student studying fine art who was excited about the chance to see and hear Desai in person.
"I just want to see if she talks the way she writes," Lappin said. "And if she has written poetry, or music, or anything new coming soon. She is so young. We have decades of fantastic literature to look forward to. She is our young female Salman Rushdie - with more love in her lyricism."
Berman has read Desai's work, and enjoyed her distinctive writing style and humor.
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