Rediff on Anne Enright’s Booker win:

The little-known author’s award has come as a shock to India as the country was pinning its hopes on Indra Sinha’s Animal People, a novel about the Bhopal gas tragedy…

Really, if a competitive-award announcement (with all its vagaries) should come as a “shock” to anyone, one would think it would be Lloyd Jones or Ian McEwan, who were the betting favourites. But what to do, after Kiran Desai’s win last year the Booker is right up there with the Oscar nominations as an opportunity for “India” to “pin its hopes” on something. Or for high-strung writers to claim that’s the case.