Product Description

Introducing a major literary talent, The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has yet seen.

Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.

Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.

Sold in sixteen countries around the world, The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54554 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A brutal view of India's class struggles is cunningly presented in Adiga's debut about a racist, homicidal chauffer. Balram Halwai is from the Darkness, born where India's downtrodden and unlucky are destined to rot. Balram manages to escape his village and move to Delhi after being hired as a driver for a rich landlord. Telling his story in retrospect, the novel is a piecemeal correspondence from Balram to the premier of China, who is expected to visit India and whom Balram believes could learn a lesson or two about India's entrepreneurial underbelly. Adiga's existential and crude prose animates the battle between India's wealthy and poor as Balram suffers degrading treatment at the hands of his employers (or, more appropriately, masters). His personal fortunes and luck improve dramatically after he kills his boss and decamps for Bangalore. Balram is a clever and resourceful narrator with a witty and sarcastic edge that endears him to readers, even as he rails about corruption, allows himself to be defiled by his bosses, spews coarse invective and eventually profits from moral ambiguity and outright criminality. It's the perfect antidote to lyrical India. (Apr.)
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From AudioFile
Debut author Aravind Adiga offers this revealing and truthful look at class struggle in modern-day India as seen through the eyes of chauffeur Balram Halwai. Halwai escapes a brutal existence in rural India only to end up murdering his rich employer in Delhi. The novel is told, in part, as a correspondence between Halwai and the premier of China, for whom the driver believes he holds valuable insights. Narrator John Lee reads with an accurate East Indian accent that will astound listeners searching for his normally stern British tone. Lee captures Halwai and his imperfect world perfectly, relating Adiga's views with a raw honesty. Lee puts his own twist on the work but never disowns Adiga's story--rather, he welcomes it with open arms. Lee is the quintessential narrator. L.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
"Compelling, angry, and darkly humorous, The White Tiger is an unexpected journey into a new India. Aravind Adiga is a talent to watch." -- Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist

"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

"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

"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

"The White Tiger echoes masterpieces of resistance and oppression (both The Jungle and Native Son come to mind) [and] contains passages of startling beauty." - Lee Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle

Customer Reviews

Living in a Decadent Society
"The White Tiger" is this year's latest recipient of the Man Booker Prize for the best novel of the year. While the judges don't always get it right when selecting for this award, I think they made a fair choice this time. The story oozes with a sense of what it must be like for a young person growing up in a modern Indian village with no familial support or economic means to make it in life. The main character is an intelligent and literate young man named Balram, who was born an outcast but has miraculously risen to become a richman's driver in the capital city of Dehli. Upon hearing a radio broadcast of his Prime Minister telling his Chinese counterpart that India is a very civilized and virtuous society, he decides to do the unthinkable and write the Chinese premier and tell the real side of the story. What the reader gets here is the rough and rude reality of what it means for many Indian children growing up in an irrational environment that uses and abuses them for criminal and sexual purposes. While the government has banned the caste system, where people are perpetually assigned to hold menial jobs, it still flourishes in all parts of Indian life. "White Tiger", the name given the young boy while at school, becomes his moniker as he makes his way into the nefarious world of corrupt officials and crime bosses. Because he is literate, he has become groomed to be a driver and lackey for a rich family in Delhi. While some might see this as a step-up in terms of ascending the social ladder of Indian society, it is anything but. Balram becomes quickly acquainted with, and be expected to handle, the nastiest of situations that involve murder, cheating, bribery, and stealing. It is from behind the wheel of a Honda Civic that this keenly intelligent young man tells this engrossing story as he wends his way from place to place in the big city, doing his masters's bidding. His fellow chauffeurs, meanwhile, are simply pawns who are not aware of the role they play in the bigger picture. They are the helpless ones who are being exploited by a very unjust and dishonorable society intent on making them its doormat. The reality of all this is that even the virtuous like Balram need to stoop to conquer. We find him gradually getting sucked into the routine of committing the odd venial misdeed in order not to be ostracized by his fellow drivers. If anything, this book is really a profound study of how corrupt practices can destroy good intentions in any society.

An Indian Crime and Punishment Done with Tongue-in-Cheek Humor

Is this novel bitter, acid, sardonic, mocking, disillusioned, scornful, disrespectful, satirical, witty, or ironic? It displays, by turns, all of those qualities. The narrator's style perfectly captures the way that my Indian friends describe how government and personal privilege work in that country. While reading, I felt like I was sitting across from one of them having a cup of tea in a friendly Indian restaurant, and that reaction made me smile.

From this element, a false note creeps into this book. The people I know who express such views are highly educated Indians who have spent a lot of time outside of India. To make the book work, however, we have to believe that the writer is intelligent but has little education and experience outside of being a servant and driver.

Why did this debut novel win the prestigious Man Booker prize? I can only attribute the basis for that award to the obvious allusions to Crime and Punishment as Aravind Adiga explores how an impoverished Indian develops the consciousness to perform a great crime in a memoir-style novel filled with unrestrained humor. I've certainly read more humorous books by Indian authors in recent years.

As the book opens, we read a letter addressed "For the Desk of: His Excellency Wen Jiabao, The Premier's Office, Beijing, Capital of the Freedom-loving Nation of China From the Desk of: 'The White Tiger,' A Thinking Man, And an Entrepreneur, Living in the world's center of Technology and Outsourcing, Electronics City Phase I (just off Hosur Main Road, Bangalore, India." It begins, "Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English." The epistle is sent off in responses to the news that the premier is scheduled to arrive in Bangalore the following week. The White Tiger has been told on the radio that the premier wants to learn the truth about Bangalore, and the White Tiger is willing to fill him in.

As you will quickly spot in the first few pages, China and India come in for their fair share of satire in this work as well . . . providing contextual humor to keep the book from becoming too serious in its focus on India and its corrupt democracy that pretends to offer more.

The nightly letters continue for a week as The White Tiger (aka Balram Halwai) explains how he became an entrepreneur and how he conducts his business. If the humor starts to weigh on you, stick with it. The final part expresses a view that the new entrepreneurial class can choose to behave better than the old ownership class did. It's that hope that makes this book rise above the kind of satire that we all enjoy in newspaper columns about government corruption.

The book's great strength is that Mr. Adiga is able to pull together so many different aspects of Indian society into one novel. It's an imaginative concept backed up by solid writing underpinned by deep insight into this complex and interesting nation that presents so many apparent contradictions to those who aren't Indian.

One of the things I liked a lot about the book is that I could imagine The White Tiger living in Washington, D.C. and talking about the politicians there. That thought added a lot to my delight.

Have fun!

Absolutely loved it!
This book, winner of the Man Booker Prize was a fantastic book! As soon as I started reading it, I found that I couldn't put it down. The book, written from the perspective of Balram Halwai, tells the story of how Balram started his life out as a servant only to end up running one the of most profitable companies in Delhi.

I understand that the novel has taken a lot of flack because it doesn't paint India in very favourable light. For example there are lots of references to the corruption of government officials. Author Aravind Adiga has been steadfast in his portrayal of his India. He says that if this is the way India is, then why try to hide the truth? Nevertheless it is probably safe to say the controversy surrounding Adiga's novel hasn't hurt sales.

As I've already stated, I had a hard time putting this book down. I think I read it in three days straight, and I probably could have read it in one day had I not forced myself to slow down and take my time. The writing style is very easy to understand and digest. There are not a lot of complicated concepts for the reader to understand and Adiga does an excellent job of leading the reader from one plot development on to the other. I particularly liked how he would reveal a small bit of information relating to Balram and then say 'but more on this later'. Thus as a reader, if you wanted to know what that tid bit related you, you had no choice but to continue reading.

This was one of the better books I've read in a long time, and I can't wait for Adiga's next book.