Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize[1] and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award.

Kiran was born in Delhi, then spent the early years of her life in Punjab and in Mumbai, where she studied at Cathedral and John Connon School.

[5] It won the Betty Trask Award,[6] a prize given by the Society of Authors for best new novels by citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35.

In August 2008, Desai was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme hosted by Michael Berkeley on BBC Radio 3.

In 2008, the Gates Foundation project invited Desai to report on a community of sex workers in the coastal state of Andhra Pradesh.