The White Tiger.

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger has won the Man-Booker prize. It is the fourth winner by an Indian writer.

The White Tiger is the story of Balram Halwai, the son of a village rickshaw wala, who

through wiles and determination becomes the driver to the hated village landlord. The book takes the form of a series of letters from the narrator, now a self-described entrepreneur in the bustling hi-tech city of Bangalore, to the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, describing “the real India '' he will not see during his upcoming official visit. We learn early on that Balram has committed murder and robbery. But all of this is told with comical fun poked not only at the excesses of the rich but also at the circumstances of poor people.

It's a novel of information, not art. It tells you all about modern India with a traditional

rags-to-riches fable. Our hero murders his employer unapologetically, and that's how he gets his riches. This is not rocket science. This is smashing a guy over the head with a broken bottle of Johnny Walker. But 90% of the book is not really the story, it's an anguished howl of rage about a distance of eighteen inches. In India, and indeed in other places too, the Rich and the Poor inhabit different universes. But the rich hire some of the poor as servants.

As the Man-Booker committee says, “The book gains from dealing with pressing social

issues and significant global developments with astonishing humor.” In fact, 80% of the

world’s software comes from India and so too do many of the world’s richest entrepreneurs. And yet there remain problems of economic and social inequality.

The White Tiger chooses Bihar, the poor state in eastern India—always maligned by

reporters who rarely visit there to report on it. The fact that none of the characters are fully realized or sympathetic may be the sign of satire, but if so, it also suggests that they stand for the real depravity of Biharis. And sure enough, Adiga’s description of village life follows from so many stereotypes found in colonial literature.

Both in India and abroad The White Tiger has received mixed reviews. Akash Kapur in the

New York Times writes about “an absence of human complexity” in the novel. And Manjula Padmanabhan in Outlook India points to its “schoolboyish sneering.” But others at The Independent and The New Yorker are cheerfully “seduced.”

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