Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008
Winner of the Galaxy Author of the Year award 2009.
Aravind Adiga's winning debut novel The White Tiger is described as a ‘compelling, angry and darkly humorous' novel about a man's journey from Indian village life to entrepreneurial success. It was described by one reviewer as an ‘unadorned portrait' of India seen ‘from the bottom of the heap'.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
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Meet Balram Halwi, the ‘White Tiger’: servant, philosopher, entrepreneur, murderer – who, over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of an absurd chandelier, tells his story.
Born in a remote Indian village, the son of a rickshaw-puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he smashes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape, of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga into whose murky depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.
When a rich village landlord hires him as a chauffeur for his son and daughter-in-law, Balram’s re-education begins. Behind the wheel of a Honda, Balram comes to New Delhi. There he finds himself among cockroaches and traffic-jams, slums and shopping malls, 21st-century technology and medieval superstition. Trapped between his instinct to be a loyal son and servant, and his desire to better himself, and under the scrutiny of 36,000,005 gods, he discovers a new morality at the heart of the new India. Gradually Balram comes to see how the Tiger might escape his cage…
Balram’s journey from darkness to the light of success is a brilliantly irreverent, blackly comic, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable tour de force.
The White Tiger features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Debut Books of the Month, eBooks of the Month, Sharing Diverse Voices, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
The White Tiger is available in Paperback, Cd-audio, Hardback
The White Tiger was written by Aravind Adiga and published by Atlantic Books
The White Tiger has 321 pages
£8.99