| The White Tiger is a compelling first novel about the new India that is growing roots all around us, in unexpected and often ominous ways. 'Compelling, angry, and darkly humorous, The White Tiger is an unexpected journey into a new India. Aravind Adiga is a talent to watch.' Mohsin Hamid, Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist 'In the grand illusions of a rising India, Aravind Adiga has found a subject Gogol might have envied. With remorselessly and delightfully mordant wit The White Tiger anatomises the fantastic cravings of the rich; it evokes, too, with startling accuracy and tenderness, the no less desperate struggles of the deprived.' Pankaj Mishra '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; there's not a sniff of saffron or a swirl of sari anywhere. Narrated by Balram, a self-styled entrepreneur who has murdered his employer, the book follows his progress from child labourer, via humiliation as a servant and driver, to a mysterious new life in Bangalore. Balram himself is an enticing figure, whose reasons for murder become completely understandable by the end, but even more impressive is the nitty-gritty of Indian life that Adiga unearths: the corruption, the class system, the sheer petty viciousness. The Indian tourist board won't be pleased, but you'll read it in a trice and find yourself gripped.' Sunday Times, London |
