Kiran Desai, the Indian-origin author who has been shortlisted for the Booker

London, Sept. 14 (PTI): Indian-origin writer Kiran Desai’s novel The Inheritance of Loss was today shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker prize along with five other works of fiction.

Her book, a cross-continental saga set in New York and India with a teenage girl as the protagonist, explores contemporary issues like multiculturalism, fundamentalism and terrorism.

Kiran is the daughter of writer Anita Desai, who was shortlisted for the prize three times in the 1980s.

The other five books which are in the fray for the $50,000 award are Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, M.J. Hyland’s Carry Me Down, Hisham Matar’s In The Country of Men, Edward St Aubyn’s Mother’s Milk and Sarah Waters’s The Night Watch.

Each of the six authors, selected from a list of 19, receives $2,500.

The award, which went to The Sea by Irish author John Banville last year, will be announced on October 10.

Of the six, only Waters was nominated before, while Matar is the only first-time novelist to make the cut.

British author David Mitchell — the bookmakers’ early favourite to win when the list was announced last month — is not included on the list.

Previous recipients Peter Carey, Nadine Gordimer and Barry Unsworth also failed to make it past the first round, BBC reported.

“Each of these novels has what we as judges were most looking for,” academic Hermione Lee, chair of this year’s judging panel, was quoted as saying.