News

Nikita Lalwani + Gifted = winner of inaugural £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Nikita Lalwani was tonight (Thursday, 26th June) named the winner of the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for Gifted, a story about a maths prodigy growing up in 1980s Cardiff, published by Penguin Books.

Penny Vincenzi, Chair of the Judges, comments,

“Gifted is a book of extraordinary range; it is touching, tender, funny and at the same time truly compelling. It covers the issues of duty and family loyalty, and the demands of an extraordinary talent, while holding at its heart the story of a young girl struggling with the agony of first love and her own, very particular, identity. Above all, it has a wonderfully bittersweet charm and for that reason Desmond Elliott would have loved it.”

The Desmond Elliott Prize is a new prize for first novels designed to reward “a sparkling good read”, a book which is both profound and has wide appeal.

Nikita Lalwani was born in Kota, Rajasthan in 1973 and raised in Cardiff. Gifted is her first novel and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007 and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2007and the Glen Dimplex Fiction Award 2007.
A child prodigy, Nikita wanted to take her maths O-level early but was dissuaded by her father. She initially studied medicine at Oxford University but left after her first year, realising that it wasn’t a career she wished to pursue.
She then read English at Bristol University and continued on to a post-graduate degree in journalism and creative writing.

Gifted was written in 18 months and Nikita received responses from potential agents within two days of looking. The Bookseller cited the book as “one of the most coveted British fiction debuts of the year”. Nikita lives in London with her husband and child.


The Winner

Gifted by Nikita Lalwani
Penguin Books, £7.99

“Superb, brilliantly realised…especially memorable for its sensuous power…
The searing narrative is unflinchingly and tenderly written.” The Independent

Cardiff in the 1980s is a place where maths can get you noticed. Rumi Vasi is the town’s ‘maths prodigy’; untangling numbers and Rubik’s cubes protects her from the harsh realities of the playground and gives a pattern to her world. But after years of her father’s determined tutoring, Rumi find that numbers are beginning to lose their innocence. India infuses her with a romantic sense of belonging and, as she grows older and desire becomes a dirty word in the Vasi household, the idea of love is opened up to painful examination.

In a voice that is by turns very funny and fiercely tender, Nikita Lalwani reveals a captivating story of high aspirations and deep longing, and the sometime loneliness of childhood.


The Prize

Named in honour of literary agent and publisher Desmond Elliott, one of the most charismatic and successful men in recent publishing history who died in August 2003, the Prize is designed to celebrate sparkling new fiction and is worth £10,000 to the winner.

In the spirit of Desmond Elliott, the judges looked for a first novel which is intelligent with broad appeal, a page-turner which makes you pause for thought.
Chair of the judges, Penny Vincenzi was joined on the judging panel by Tatler Editor, Geordie Greig and author and journalist Cristina Odone.

-ends-

Notes to editors

• Gifted by Nikita Lalwani is published by Penguin Books priced £7.99

• Nikita Lalwani may be available for interview. Please contact Hannah Blake at Colman Getty

• The judges of the Desmond Elliott Prize are available for interview. Please contact Hannah Blake

• Electronic Images of Gifted and the other shortlisted books, judges and the Prize logo are available from Colman Getty

• There were 11 books on the longlist and 3 books on the shortlist

• The Desmond Elliott Charitable Trust is a registered charity. It is chaired by Dallas Manderson, Group Sales Director of Orion Publishing Group. He is joined by Christine Berry, managing partner of Taylor Vinters, one of the leading commercial law firms in Cambridge, and Liz Thomson, Editor of Publishing News. Both Dallas and Christine worked with Desmond Elliott at Arlington Books

• The Desmond Elliott website includes information about the prize and the shortlisted books with regular news updates - www.desmondelliottprize.com


For further information please contact
Hannah Blake or Mark Hutchinson
at Colman Getty
T: 020 7631 2666
E: hannah@colmangetty.co.uk

Praise for Gifted

“[A] charming rite-of-passage novel… Lalwani’s evocation of teenage dislocation is pitch-perfect and she inhabits her heroine’s interior world with tender authority.” The Guardian

“A sparkling, funny and poignant study of a young maths prodigy struggling with her gift and a difficult family.” Gerard Woodward, Observer, Books of the Year

“Nikita Lalwani does a good job of getting inside Rumi’s mind, as we journey with her from the innocent child with a love of numbers to a frustrated teen, addicted to chewing raw cumin seeds and trying to grow up in a family that won’t let her.” The Times

“[Lalwani] conveys the confusions of Rumi’s developing body and mind with charm and warmth… and pinpoints with genuine insight the bewilderment and anguish of a young woman marked out from her peers.” The Sunday Times


About Desmond Elliott

Desmond Elliott’s life reads like a page-turning rags to riches story. From humble beginnings in an Irish orphanage he came to England in 1947, at the age of 16 with just £2 in his pocket, to start his publishing career at Macmillan. After a colourful career in-house, Desmond set up as an agent and subsequently went on to establish his own publishing company, Arlington Books, in 1960.

This dedication, coupled with creative business sense, was key to the creation of a list of hugely successful blockbuster novelists; Jilly Cooper, Leslie Thomas and Penny Vincenzi, to name but a few. Respected and loved by his authors, in the words of Candida Lycett Green, Desmond was simply “magic”.

Charismatic, witty, and waspish, Elliott lived his life with verve. He drank only champagne, always crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and used Fortnum & Mason as his local shop. His office was in Mayfair and he had homes in London’s St. James’s and New York’s Park Avenue. Desmond Elliott died in August 2003 at the age of 73.


Colman Getty
June 2008

Other current news items