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White Tiger / Aravind Adiga

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Balram Halwai, a.k.a. the “White Tiger,” was born in the “Darkness” of India where inherited caste assignments condemn men and women to a lifetime of abject poverty and servitude. Starting first as a hired driver to a more privileged caste, Balram aspires to be part of the New India, where outsourced call-centers, foreign technology subsidiaries, and start-ups signal the new economic clout of the subcontinent within the global economy. He gains entrance to this New India by becoming a murderer.

The images that Adiga paints of India are exquisite and often metaphorical, illustrating the frequent madness that is commonplace there. The White Tiger brought to mind J.M. Coetzee’s apartheid novels, Richard Wright’s Native Son, and the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Adiga’s highly captivating novel masterfully exposes the underside of India’s economic aspirations with all its contradictions: poverty and excess, modernity and peasantry, democracy and graft, and piety and immorality. This novel will remain with you long after you’ve finished reading it.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008.

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