The White Tiger
Author: Aravind Adiga
Genre: Fiction
The White Tiger is one of the few Indian novels that won the prestigious Man Booker Prize (2008). Aravind Adiga shares the honour with celebrated fellow Indian writers like VS Naipaul, Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie. Educated in Columbia and Oxford, he was a journalist with Time magazine. The book, also on New York Times bestseller, was later adapted into a Netflix original movie.
What gives this book its lasting appeal is its dark humour and delightful wit, tackling serious social issues but without once being preachy. It shows the two Indias – Darkness represented by the backward city of Dhanbad in Bihar and Light represented by the rich and americanized lifestyle of Gurgaon, near Delhi. And what happens when they clash. The story is told by the protagonist Balram Halwai – a poor underdog from the Darkness, then a Driver, Philosopher, Murderer, and eventually a very rich entrepreneur. The book starts as a letter he writes to the Chinese visiting premier signing off as The White Tiger, a thinking man.
A lot of dramatic irony used yet the book remains funny and clever. Thanks for the review.
The vast challenges India faces :Religion, Caste, Corruption, Poverty are all well highlighted but without ever being pontifical or boring. Covering topics like of freedom, individuality, and globalization too