Disco dancer, you pointed out what you think is an 'infuriating' fact and it is boiling my blood. If you are here to have an honest discussion about the book, then by all means...feel free to tell us what you think. You obviously dont have any interested in constructive criticism. You have something against women and Indians? And the British aristocrats? and TEA??? You still havent told us what you think is so not worthy about the book that the Booker prize wasnt deserved. Or why Booker prize holds no value. If the judges were not British, tea-drinkers, aristocrats, colonizers, and women, would you say the same thing?? And if Kiran Desai's mother was not a writer herself, would have said the same thing? Just tell me what do you think the judges get by picking X writer vs. Y. They have passed up writers whose mother tongue is English to pick this girl and has a thought ever crossed your mind that maybe the book was GOOD?? Obviously, you are very biased and you won't read a book written by an Indian, a women at that..and specially a book that won the Booker prize, coz it was decided by majority of the women who are British- tea-drinking-aristrocrats. Do you think that literature is sometimes able to overcome all those social stigma and really portray a STORY, even if it is fictional? Salman Rushdie won the Booker of the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children. Well, he is Indian by birth. Do you think he wont the award coz he has been a British citizen for a long time and he speakes with British accent?? Or was it coz he was not a woman and maybe the judges were all men too? Despite all that...the book is all based in India.....oh, thats right..the judges must have been reminded of the glorious past...wait a minute! the book doesnt talk about pre-independence India at all coz the protagonist was born on the exact second of the Independence. Hmmm.