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The White Tiger: A Novel Paperback – October 14, 2008
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The stunning Booker Prize–winning novel from the author of Amnesty and Selection Day that critics have likened to Richard Wright’s Native Son, The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. “This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before” (John Burdett, Bangkok 8).
The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.
Recalling The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, The White Tiger is narrative genius with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 14, 2008
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.9 x 8.44 inches
- ISBN-109781416562603
- ISBN-13978-1416562603
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Editorial Reviews
From Bookmarks Magazine
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC
Review
"An exhilarating, side-splitting account of India today, as well as an eloquent howl at her many injustices. Adiga enters the literary scene resplendent in battle dress and ready to conquer. Let us bow to him." -- Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook
"The perfect antidote to lyrical India." - Publishers Weekly
"This fast-moving novel, set in India, is being sold as a corrective to the glib, dreamy exoticism Western readers often get...If these are the hands that built India, their grandkids really are going to kick America's ass...BUY IT." - New York Magazine
"Darkly comic...Balram's appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations of the social order are both winning and unsettling." - The New Yorker
"Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger is one of the most powerful books I've read in decades. No hyperbole. This debut novel from an Indian journalist living in Mumbai hit me like a kick to the head -- the same effect Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man had. - USA Today
"Extraordinary and brilliant... At first, this novel seems like a straightforward pulled-up-by-your-bootstraps tale, albeit given a dazzling twist by the narrator's sharp and satirical eye for the realities of life for India's poor... But as the narrative draws the reader further in, and darkens, it becomes clear that Adiga is playing a bigger game... Adiga is a real writer - that is to say, someone who forges an original voice and vision. There is the voice of Halwai - witty, pithy, ultimately psychopathic... Remarkable... I will not spoil the effect of this remarkable novel by giving away ... what form his act of blood-stained entrepreneurship takes. Suffice to say that I was reminded of a book that is totally different in tone and style, Richard Wright's Native Son, a tale of the murderous career of a black kid from the Chicago ghetto that awakened 1940s America to the reality of the racial divide. Whether The White Tiger will do the equivalent for today's India - we shall see." - Adam Lively, The Sunday Times (London)
"Fierce and funny...A satire as sharp as it gets." - Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times
"There is a new Muse stalking global narrative: brown, angry, hilarious, half-educated, rustic-urban, iconoclastic, paan-spitting, word-smithing--and in the case of Aravind Adiga she hails from a town called Laxmangarh. This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before. Adiga is a global Gorky, a modern Kipling who grew up, and grew up mad. The future of the novel lies here." - John Burdett, author of Bangkok 8
"Adiga's training as a journalist lends the immediacy of breaking news to his writing, but it is his richly detailed storytelling that will captivate his audience...The White Tiger echoes masterpieces of resistance and oppression (both The Jungle and Native Son come to mind) [and] contains passages of startling beauty...A book that carefully balances fable and pure observation." - Lee Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 1416562605
- Publisher : Free Press (October 14, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781416562603
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416562603
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.44 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #52,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #337 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #1,118 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #4,476 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Aravind Adiga was born in India in 1974 and 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.
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"But pay attention: fully formed fellows after twelve years of school and four years of university wear nice suits, they join companies and take orders from other men for the rest of their lives. Entrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay."
"We worship him in our temples because he is the shining example of how to serve your master with absolute fidelity, love and devotion. These are the gods they have foisted on us. Understand how hard it is for a man to win his freedom."
"You, young man, are an intelligent, honest and vivacious fellow in this crowd of idiots and thugs. In any jungle what is the rarest of animals ... the creature that comes along once in a generation? I thought about it and said: the white tiger."
************
White Tiger begins with an entrepreneur writing a letter to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who is planning a state visit to Bangalore, and tells his life story. Balram grew up so poor he didn't have a name or birthday; his mother was sick and his father too busy as a Bihar rickshaw puller to make a record. After a few years of education he was pulled from school to pay off his sister's dowry by working in a tea shop. Thugs extort money from villagers, hospitals bribe politicians and cheat patients. He rejects religion for making people servile. Balram moves to a nearby city, learning to drive a limousine.
Ringing bells at rich people's gates, Balram gets a job as a chauffeur and servant for one of the landlords of his home town. The landlord's son Ashok has just returned from New York with his pretty new wife, Pinky Madam. Balram keeps his ears open, learning his employer and coworker's secrets. He becomes the number one driver over rival employees. The boss is in with corrupt politicians who steal elections and sell public resources for personal gain. A huge kickback is demanded by the Great Socialist. Ashok, Pinky and Balram head for New Delhi to fix the problem, bribing a minister.
Delhi is a vast city of crazily numbered streets and endless roundabouts, of extreme air pollution and income disparity. Drivers and servants live in horrible conditions but better than those on the streets. Balram begins to hate the squalor and aspires to the life of his masters. Pinky causes a tragic accident and leaves for New York; Ashok is left alone with Balram. In addition to his driving, Balram cooks, cleans and washes Ashok's feet. He begins to cheat the boss by selling gas, side rides and inflating repairs. In the jungle Maoists smuggle Chinese bombs, waiting to overthrow their masters.
When Balram's grandmother arranges a marriage to get his dowry something snaps. He had been sending all his money home but stopped months earlier. Ashok's family made him sign a confession for a crime he didn't commit, wanting him to serve jail time for someone else. Servants were expected to accept abuse without complaint, relatives punished for a servant's transgressions. His nephew arrives unexpectedly from the village with instructions for Balram to look after him. When Ashok makes plans to replace him he takes a terrible revenge, becoming a businessman in Bangalore.
Aravind Adiga won the Booker Prize in 2008 for White Tiger, his first novel, which went on to become an Academy Award nominated film. He grew up in a family of doctors, bankers and politicians, not the background of the narrator, but his voice is authentic. Adiga's writing is iconoclastic and must have offended some readers. His critique of conditions of poverty and ignorance, rise of capitalism and corruption is both satirical and sympathetic. As a debut by a young author it is impressive. Although Adiga is comic and entertaining throughout he embeds serious social insights into his story.
This book grips you with mystery, secrets, and misery. One example of mystery is how the wealthy landlords earn money taking large sums of money from multiple banks on a daily basis leaving the reader wondering who, what, where and why. Mr. Ashok never discloses what he does for a living. Balram starts collecting secrets from the moment he becomes acquainted with the Ashok family. His never misses a conversation or forgets an event. His working relationship started off as a lie stating that he was not a drinker or interested in women or money. He also lied about his driving experience. Misery is described throughout the entire novel. Balrams living conditions with hundreds upon hundreds of cockroaches and mosquitoes left the reader gagging. He could hear the roaches gnawing away at the baseboards every night while he slept under a net. He lived on mouse like portions of food and tiny sums of rupees and went hungry most days trying to satisfy his hunger chewing paan. The endless hours of waiting for his master at the mall with his wife or girlfriend is painful to read. The stories from the other drivers of horrible living conditions, murder, betrayal, and death were the only things to lead him away from complete boredom. The magazine Murder Weekly was the only form of entertainment as the drivers passed it around. The camaraderie among the drivers was the only sense of joy the reader will experience. They shared, they experimented and they would always try to help one another and they had each other’s back. They were always hoping that one of their “brothers” would make something of themselves someday.
If you would like to learn more about the economic conditions in India including the exploitation of the labor force by foreign corporations, then this book will satisfy your curiosity. The American corporations moving in and setting up call centers will shock you. The extreme gap between the poor and the wealthy people of India and their strange caste system makes this book a very entertaining read.
Top reviews from other countries
roman très bien écrit, et surtout véritable "documentaire sur la société actuelle".
très bon descriptif de la société indienne coupée en 2: les villes, à l'heure de la mondialisation et les zones rurales " the Darkness" toujours à l'heure des castes, et de la société traditionnelle
Si vous voyagez en Inde et ne comprenez pas tout de la société, ce livre va vous éclairer sérieusement
Here we follow the development of a poor 'half-baked' Indian boy named simply Gunna - Boy. Because no-one in his family had the time to give him a real name. His teacher finally names him. But he has changed now again, leaving the old name behind like a snake leaves its skin. Now he has become an entrepreneur - and his story is masterly told by Aravind Adiga. Who rightfully won the Man Booker Prize in 2008.
And what a story it is! It will be given to us in form of letters our now adult protagonist is writing night after night to the Premier of China, in Beijing - by him called 'The Capital of the Freedom-Loving Nation of China'. From a extraordinary talented scholar in his village to an almost-slave in a tea-shop. Then to the high-rises of Delhi as a junior driver for a very rich, but also very malleable millionaire. And the whole family - with the roots in the same village our boy came from, plus one American spouse - see in him only a beast of burden. Only his Master has some limited form of human feelings for him. The boy sleeps in the basement with roaches and dreams the impossible dream. Contacts with other drivers in similar situations will teach him to find a way out of this one-way street. The Money his salary - which once rolled right into the hands of his odious grandmother in the dirty hometown - now he keeps it for his way out. But the corruption that surrounds him day by day will corrupt him too, and very soon. Now the question is: Will he really be able to commit murder to realize his dreams of a free - and before all - totally independent life? The answer comes very soon in the letters he writes from his new office, adorned with a lot of crystal chandeliers. He is an 'entrepreneur' now - and Jo's start-ups are very successful. He plans for the future, too. But he has lost almost all humanity. So he has finally become a real 'White Tiger' - merciless feeding on everything and everyone, and be sure to be the first on the meal.
A very accurate picture of the India when Bangalore came up as the Silicon Valley of India. Our hero has found the right place to enlarge his activities into the sector of real-estate. Where there will be people they need places.
I only wish that this very talented author writes a book like "10 Years Later" - to see if that White Tiger had survived the modern jungle of hyper-modern India...
Have to read 2 books of Aravind Adiga, "Last Man in Tower" and "Between the Assassinations". Both are a clear mirror of the Indian Society and touch the themes of corruption and Hindus vs Muslims. I will review those books, too.
But this one is a clear 5**** star, a wonderful example how a citizen is more than able to judge his 'Mother India' and the moral corruption without annoying an interested reader like me.
Reccomended for those with an open mind, especially for foreign cultures and upcoming industrial giants.