Author was turning weird

May 28 2007 by Claire Hill, Western Mail

INDIAN-BORN author Kiran Desai might have won the Booker Prize with her second novel The Inheritance of Loss, but she admits she was “turning weird” during the writing process.

The daughter of author Anita Desai told the audience at Hay Festival on Saturday that the novel, which brings together different experiences of immigration, took seven years to write.

She said, “I suppose I was quite happy spending seven years and growing more and more poor and more and more weird.

“I’d go to my room, put my feet in the sun and I had writer’s block for months and it didn’t bother me at all.”

The 35-year-old admitted that she was scared to answer the phone when she was writing and would try to avoid people on the street.

“My sister called me up and said, ‘Please, please, please get yourself a job. You are doing yourself mental harm,’” she laughed.

When her mother told her to finish the book she realised it was time to get the novel together.

Winning the Booker Prize in 2006 for her second novel, the author credits her mother’s house with giving her the inspiration to write, but admits that it was hard to come up with the title.

She said, “It can sound very depressing at parties when you tell people, and the book is funny in parts. My father said I should have called it The Loss of Inheritance, as everyone would understand that.”

Spotted @ Hay
ACTOR Damian Lewis was spotted wandering into the Cafe Direct tent on Saturday dressed in baggy jeans and what looked like a navy baby sling – without baby.

The Coronation Street actor Brian Capron was seen dressed in beige combat shorts and socks and trainers carrying his copy of The Guardian under his arm – not very Richard Hillman.

As for politicians, Gordon Brown was pressing the flesh greeting passers- by looking very tanned and accompanied by about 10 security guards and police before his sell-out talk.

And perhaps after seeing her old friend Sir John Major, Edwina Currie was wandering round the site in a beige Baker-boy cap and a petrol blue leather jacket.