Booker winner gives credit to Bush, sort of

Indian novelist Kiran Desai said she may never have won the Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, had George W. Bush not been the U.S. president -- because he put her off becoming an American citizen.

The Man Booker Prize is open to British and Commonwealth citizens, and the Indian-born Desai has yet to apply for a U.S. passport, although she has lived in New York for 20 years.

“George Bush won once and he won the second time, and I couldn’t bring myself to [apply],” Desai said in an interview in Toronto as she voiced her disapproval of the president’s foreign policy. “So I really owe George Bush my Booker, in an odd way. It’s really very funny.”

Desai, 35, became the youngest woman to capture the $95,000 prize last month with her sweeping novel “The Inheritance of Loss.” The book’s narrative ranges from undocumented workers in New York to political violence in the foothills of the Himalayas during the 1980s.