The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

The winner of the Man Booker Award, Aravind Adiga stepped in the world of storytelling with his debut novel The White Tiger. According to Adiga, the exigency for The W hite Tiger was to capture the unspoken voice of people from "the Darkness" the impoverished areas of rural India, and he "wanted to do so without sentimentality or portraying them as mirthless humorless weaklings as they are usually."

Summary of The White Tiger

Lets start with the story that sprouts at Laxmangarh, a small village situated on the bank of Ganga, the holy river of India (though the protagonist doesnt think so); where Balram alias Munna, the protagonist in the story, was borne as a underprivileged child who could not even finish his elementary education. The novel is based on the disparities of two worlds: darkness, inhabited by poor and underprivileged who cannot even meet their bare minimums; and the lighted world, inhabited by zamindars, politicians, businessmen etc. who shamelessly exploits the ones from darkness, making them even poorer and grows their own grandeur. It is the story of Balram Halwai who hails from darkness but possesses the will, wisdom and most importantly cunningness to break into the light, the world of riches. During his journey from darkness to light, he plays several roles, dons several hats, tries different tricks and commits many crimes one of which includes the cold-blooded, well-planned murder of his master and escaping with money that values in lakhs. Taking off from Laxmangarh, the story progresses with his journey to Dhanbad, Delhi and finally ends at Bangalore. Despite the fact that it belongs to the class of literary fiction, the language is quite simple making it an easy read. I dont think you will need a dictionary to understand it as in the case of conventional novels. The narration is communicative, written in the form of an open letter with periodic salutations and greetings complimented with a typical sarcastic tone in an attempt to shatter the image of so-called progressing India, which is true but overly done at times (may be because of my sense of possessiveness of India). No doubt, the story is captivating, which progresses with pace holding suspense and revealing the folds in layers, leaving you agape at certain instances.

About Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga was born in 1974 in Madras (now called Chennai), and grew up in Mangalore in the south of India. He was educated at Columbia University in New York and Magdalen College, Oxford. His articles have appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and the Times of India. His first novel, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2008. A second novel, Last Man in Tower, was published in 2011. Adiga began his journalistic career as a financial journalist, interning at the Financial Times. With pieces published in the Financial Times and Money, he covered the stock market and investment, interviewing, among others, Donald Trump. His review of previous Booker Prize winner Peter Carey's book, Oscar and Lucinda, appeared in The Second Circle, an online literary review. He was subsequently hired by TIME, where he remained a South Asia correspondent for three years before going freelance. During his freelance period, he wrote The White Tiger. He currently lives in Mumbai, India.

Sources http://www.aravindadiga.com/bio/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aravind_Adiga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Tiger