Well, who'd have thought it? Not the bookies, clearly - they rated her as a 5-1 outsider. But the judges disagreed, and awarded this year's prize to Kiran Desai, the daughter of thrice Booker-nominated Anita, for The Inheritance of Loss, her novel of family, love and politics set in the foothills of the Himalaya.
Desai, who has written only one other novel, beat the favourites Sarah Waters and Edward St Aubyn on the grounds of "the strength of the book's humanity", according to the chair of the judges, Hermione Lee. Read the story in full here, and tell us: did the judges gets it right? Is Desai a deserving winner, or should someone else have walked away with the gong?
