to win the Award after Sir Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai. The novel was sold instantly in sixteen countries. It has garnered profuse praise from the literary critics and readers alike.

“Unlike almost any other Indian novel you might have read in recent years, this page-turner offers a completely bald,angry,unadorned portrait of the country as seen from the bottom of the heap…even more impressive is the nitty-gritty of Indian life that Adiga unearths: the corruption, the class system, the sheer petty viciousness.” writes Andrew Holgate, in The Sunday Times(London), while the Indian Express comments,” An intelligent and ruthless portrait of the India in the making-shining or rising, but always sinking-shot through with wit and black humor that match the author’s economy with words.” USA Today’s reviewer has this to say, “Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger is one of the most powerful books I’ve read in decades…But Tiger isn’t about race or caste in India. It’s about the vast economic inequality between the poor and the wealthy elite. …This is an amazing and angry novel about injustice and power.”

The first person narrator Balram Halwai is an uneducated son of an impoverished rickshaw- puller in a village in Bihar. Impressed by his ability to read and write the school inspector names him White Tiger (an exceptional student). To help the family pay off the debts, he drops out from school and joins his brother to work in a tea shop. The owners of tea shops are known to exploit illiterate child labor. Balram soon gets fed up being just one of the human spiders, smashing coals, wiping floors and tables with dirty rags and serving rude customers. He is street smart, patient and observant. Above all, as he says, “I am not an original thinker, but I am an original listener’. He quits working in the tea house and with a little financial help from his granny learns to drive and moves to Delhi. He is hired as a chauffer by Stork (his village’s wealthy but corrupt businessman), who has two sons, Mukesh and Ashok (who has returned from U.S.with his Christian wife Pinky madam). Initially, like many chauffeurs he not only drives the car but also does odd jobs like sweeping the courtyard. Cooking, shopping, washing and drying two Pomerian dogs, and massaging his master’s legs. He lives in squalor with other servants in the basement of his master’s palatial building. Slowly he picks up tricks of the trade. While driving, he listens to and observes his employers bribing ministers for tax concessions, boozing hard liquor, visiting prostitutes and indulging in other shady practices. He learns that in the city there are only two castes-men with big bellies and men with small bellies. He too dreams of enjoying life of the rich and growing a big belly. He makes money on the side-siphoning gas, taking a cut from mechanics, using his master’s car as a taxi, and re-selling his master’s empty whiskey bottles. But that is not enough for him, so he murders Ashok, and escapes to Bangalore with a huge pot of cash. He ends up as a successful entrepreneur, nursing a dream of opening a school which would turn out many white tigers like him.
This fast moving novel takes the form of seven letters addressed by Balram to the Chinese Premier on the eve of his state visit to India, wherein he narrates his riveting story of his escape from rural darkness to the city of light where he becomes a successful entrepreneur. Adiga is a brilliant storyteller with uncommon talent. He has a sharp eye for detail and captures the sights, sounds and smells of both rural and urban landscapes. He reveals that under the hype about India being a rising superpower with a rising middle class, there is a large number still living in shadows, in utter poverty and neglect. State has failed this poor majority in education, healthcare and law and order. Poor cooks, cleaners, drivers, nannies, are all trapped in a ‘rooster coop’. They can’t breathe and yet they don’t escape. Family values, ties, identity and concern for the safety of their families prevent them from stealing, disloyalty or committing other crimes against their superiors or the system. Adiga also rails against sham elections, corrupt politicians and police, pollution in cities and other ills Despite all this, Balram teaches us that religion doesn’t create virtue-and money doesn’t solve every problem-but decency can still be found in a corrupt world and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations. His voice is utterly amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.

Adiga’s exquisitely crafted novel is crackling, witty, angry and with blistering suspense. It is highly entertaining as well as thought provoking. It has a Reading Group Guide and Author Q&A .The novel is definitely a must read.

Aravind Adiga was born in Madras (now Chennai), India in 1974 and raised partly in Sydney, Australia. He attended Columbia and Oxford Universities. A former correspondent for Time magazine, he has also been published in the Financial Times. He lives in Mumbai, India.