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The White Tiger: A Novel
The White Tiger: A Novel
The White Tiger: A Novel
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The White Tiger: A Novel

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NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

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.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFree Press
Release dateApr 22, 2008
ISBN9781416562733
Author

Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga was born in 1974 in Madras (now 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 including the New Yorker, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and the Times of India. His first novel, The White Tiger, won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 2008. He is also the author of Last Man in Tower and Selection Day.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Engaging story about today's India. Lots to learn. Compelling.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is a novel of modern India. Delivered in a letter, we read the story of Balram Halwai, also known as the White Tiger. Balram was born to a poor rural family. He actually didn’t even have a name until given one by the school teacher. His father, a rickshaw driver had hopes that Balram would be the one to get an education and improve the status of the family. Instead he dropped out of school and worked.He eventually became a driver for a local wealthy family and when the son and his wife moved to Delhi, Balram went with them. On the surface he was the perfect servant, driving their car, sweeping their floors, and massaging their feet. But when he realizes what little esteem they had for him, he stole a bag of money and killed his employer.Setting himself up as a successful entrepreneur in the city of Bangalore, he confesses all in his letter to the Chinese premier and although his subject matter is rather grim, he delivers his story with plenty of humor and wit. As a narrator, I was a little suspicious of his reliability as he spends a lot of time in self-justification but the picture he paints of Indians struggling with the concepts of modernity are interesting if a little simplistic. I found The White Tiger to be an involving read and fast paced read that I enjoyed.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My first novel by Aravind Adiga and even though its a stark look at Indian culture and life, I did thoroughly enjoy the book.It follows the story of Balram the "White Tiger" a young man born to a poor family in a small village and his decision to leave the fate born to him.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Laughed out loud a lot. But underneath it's a little bit unnerving. What has the world become?! Really easy to read and enjoyable.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Before I begin my review, a statutory warning to all my patriotic Indian brothers and sisters... this is India-bashing, large scale. If you are the sort of person who gets all worked up when any aspect of India is criticised, this book is not for you.

    That said, Arvind Adiga bashes India where it has to be bashed. No honest reader will be able to dispute that the picture of India he paints is a false one. You will find the majority of Indians embarassedly changing the topic when Bihar (the state Adiga names "Darkness") enters the conversation. Most of the things he mentions are not only possible, but probable and even likely. You only have to read any Indian newspaper over the period of a week to know it.

    But I believe the author fails in the creation of Munna alias Balram Halwai, the protagonist, because his voice is totally out of character with the person. It is the supercilious voice of a Westernised Indian, detached from his home country by education and station in life that comes through. The street smart Munna who murdered his employer and set up his business in Bangalore will talk in an entirely different way (for example, he will never say "five hundred thousand rupees" - he'll say "five lakhs"). Here, the character just becomes a mouthpiece for the author.

    Secondly, Adiga goes overboard in criticising India, so that some of his examples become rather extreme (the immediate one that comes to mind is the schoolteacher boozing and sleeping in the classroom). In some other cases, they are downright silly (Balram buys a dosa and throws out all the potatoes before giving to Mukesh, whereas he could have bought a dosa easily without the potatoes: these are two varieties). It also confirms the opinion I formed of Adiga from his bio that he is that type of Indian Lord Macaulay wanted to create: Indian only by birth but English in spirit.

    Lastly, the story failed to hold my interest. Take out all the social criticism and it is nothing but a hollow shell. And the gimmicks, like framing it as a letter to the Chinese premier, are trite to the point of being nauseating.

    The only thing that forced me to give two stars to this work is some of the pithy statements Adiga makes about Indian society. Especially the ones about how caste-ridden India was a zoo, with all animals in separate cages when the British let them all out, so now only the ones with the big bellies and the ones with the small bellies are left; about automobile horns during a traffic jam joining together to form a single wail like a lost calf wailing for its mother; and the one about how the major diseases India faces are cholera, typhoid and election fever (though I would also include cricket).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brilliant. Original, stark, and moving. An indictment of India from beginning to end. Somehow Adiga manages to write about horrifying conditions and pervasive corruption in a way that is light, engaging, and funny. It was a book I never wanted to put down.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant, philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, Balram tells us the terrible and treanfixing story of how he came to be a sucess in life-having nothing but his own wits to help him along. 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.Amoral, irreverent, deeply entertaining, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international sensation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great, easy read. I wouldn't read it as a factual telling of India anymore than the Godfather tells the average American's story. But it gives you some idea and is a very good story. Maybe 8-10 hours total reading, tops.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The White Tiger, an Indian entrepreneur living in Bangalore, has heard an announcement on All India Radio that the Chinese Premier Jiabao is about to visit Bangalore. The announcer also said that Mr Jiabao wanted to know the truth about Bangalore, to meet some Indian entrepreneurs, and to hear the story of their success from their own lips. Concerned that the official story given to the Premier will be nothing like the truth, the White Tiger begins to write a series of emails to Jiabao.Balram Halwai is The White Tiger. Until he went to school, he didn't really have a name. His father, Vikram Halwai, a rickshaw puller, called his son Munna, the Hindi word for boy. It was the school teacher who named him Balram when he enrolled him at school. Similarly his date of birth had never been recorded. It was eventually given to him when he was enrolled to vote during a scam by a village politician to get as many 18 year olds on the roll as possible. Despite being identified as an intelligent child and singled out for special treatment by a school inspector, Munna's schooling is cut short when his family sells him to become a tea shop spider.Munna writes nightly to Premier Jiabao, telling him the story of his life: how he, a half-baked man, has become an entrepreneur who employs more than a dozen men. The letters describe for the reader an India that we can barely imagine, where corruption is rife, a nation of entrepreneurs, particularly in the field of technology, although things regarded as the essentials of life like clean drinking water, electricity, and adequate sewage simply don't exist.THE WHITE TIGER is not really crime fiction, although I counted 20 murders. But the murders are not the focal point of this book. It is the social and economic circumstances revealed in Munna's letters. It lays bare an India that is failing it's citizens, where landlords and socialists alike bribe officials, and human life is regarded cheaply. The winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize, it is an eminently readable book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An enjoyable, if somewhat cynical look at modern day India. The 'White Tiger' of the story is Balram, a chauffer who murders his employer and starts a new life running his own taxi company. The descriptions of life in the streets and slums of India won't help the Indian tourist board, but as a look at the background to India's drive towards a centre of commerce and technology, it is certainly thought provoking. Whilst the beginning and middle sections of the book are good, I felt the end where Balram murders his employer and goes onto to greater things all happened a bit quickly and seemed slightly at odds with the more in depth earlier passages. Worth a read none the less.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Balram Halwai is the mocking, pathological narrator of Aravind Adiga’s Booker winning novel The White Tiger. Born in the Darkness - the underbelly of India - and destined from childhood to be a servant, he tells his story in a series of letters over a seven day period to Wen Jiabao, the Premier of China. A self-described entrepreneur and philosopher, Balram explains how he has come to see himself as a white tiger.The inspector pointed his cane straight at me. “You, young man, are an intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals - the creature that comes along only once in a generation?” I thought about it and said: “The white tiger.” “That’s what you are, in this jungle.” - from The White Tiger, page 30 -It is this inner view of himself - a rare creature in a savage world - which drives him eventually to murder his master and take charge of his life.,i>Even as a boy I could see what was beautiful in the world: I was destined not to stay a slave. - from The White Tiger, page 35 -Adiga has created a not wholly likeable protagonist to narrate the story of an India which is sharply divided between the very rich (and corrupt) and the very poor. The cynical voice of Balram jeers at democracy and uncovers the dark, corrupt world of the wealthy upper class. He pokes fun at China who despite their triumphs ‘in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don’t have democracy.‘Adiga uses an analogy of roosters in the coop to describe the servant’s (or poor man’s) inescapable status in India.They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. - from The White Tiger, page 147 -But for Balram, there is a way out - one of his own making. He resists the pull of family obligation and loyalty to his master and plans his escape through cold-blooded murder.[...] only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed - hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters - can break out of the coop. - from The White Tiger, page 150 -Rage is what fuels Balram to break free of his caste and become a successful businessman. He takes his destiny into his own hands and does what he feels he must to become a free man. And in the end, he concludes there is really no difference between a man and a demon - only that one has woken up and the other is still sleeping. The message seems to be that there is no good anywhere in India. It is no wonder that Indians have been critical of this novel.The White Tiger is an interesting story - one that is compelling and blackly humorous despite its negative message. It is a scathing commentary on the divide between the poor and the rich, the benevolent and the corrupt - but, it is ultimately just a very good yarn.Recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Winner of 2008's Man Booker Prize White Tiger is the debut novel by Aravind Adiga and is a picteresque fantasy about India that deals with the destitute, the class system, the institutionalised corruption and superstitions in a scathing black comic look. I have read in other reviews that people resented the narrator and his twisted outlook on life but for my own part I enjoyed it immensley and found myself both drawn into the story and eager to know what happened next to the protagonist (Belram Halwai) but also not caring enough about him as a person that I felt bad about anything bad happening to him which are inevitable in someone decideing at an early point that good deeds often go unrewarded.Despite a lack of education and seemingly no prospects because of his social position (or lack of), Belram is determined to move up the social ladder to have the things he has only seen other people enjoying and he gets his chance when he lands a job as a driver in Delhi for a landlord from his village. What follows is an adventure through the city with characters alomost Dickensian in their stereotypes as moral barometers but wonderfuly enjoyable as you're drawn into looking at Delhi through Belram's eyes.I'd recommend this book happily to anyone and would readily re-read it so it gets 4 stars from me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I would never have picked this up on my own, but it is the title I am preparing a book club kit for. The toughest part of the book is figuring out how you feel about the main character - but that is what makes it such a good choice for a book club. Lots to discuss here.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation on earth, was like a zoo. A clean, well kept, orderly zoo. Everyone in his place, everyone happy. ... And then, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on the fifteenth of August, 1947 -- the day the British left -- the cages had been left open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law. Those that were the most ferocious, the hungriest, had eaten everyone else up, and grown big bellies. (p. 53-54)Balram Halwai lives in "the jungle" that is 21st century India. The book is organized as a lengthy letter from Balram to China's Premier, shortly before the Premier's visit to Bangalore. In the letter, written over several days, Balram describes how he left his rural village to work as a driver for the son of the village's wealthiest man. He landed this position completely by luck, and used it to rise up in Indian servant society, and eventually become an entrepreneur. But this is no rags-to-riches story. It is instead a sometimes humorous, sometimes scathing account of contemporary Indian society. Adiga vividly describes the stark contrasts between "haves" and "have nots," and is resigned to this remaining as status quo for years to come:An Indian revolution? No, sir. It won't happen. People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else -- from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. (p. 261)The White Tiger explores many of the same themes as A Fine Balance, but I found the latter better-written and far more moving. This was an OK read, but disappointing compared to other Booker Prize winners.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    While I found it readable, I hated it, I hated the sarcasm, & I hated the characters, Yes, this is a book that is worth reading, but this is not what I would consider literature. I'm not sure what the Booker Prize panel was thinking when they awarded this book a prize.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very clever and humourous book which displays the underbelly of Indian society and the deleterious effects of the West on India. While I enjoyed reading the book I found the characters unlikeable and difficult to relate to. Perhaps this is how Adiga planned them to be! I can see why it won the Booker, but I didn't find it an absilutely compelling read. I look forward to his next book
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed listening to this book.I liked the accent the narrator used.It was very interesting, yet sad to hear about the horrible poverty and corruption in India. It sad to see how their customs and beliefs make their lives so hard.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For me at least this is quite a hard book to review as it is a book about a murderer and as such I feel that I should hate him but in the end I cannot bring myself to do so. This book is so different from the world of 'God of Small Things' with no saris, weddings etc to be seen. It tells of the real underbelly of Indian society where the caste system still lives and breathes, where the poor are deprived education, sanitation and anything but a life of servitude and continued poverty. The book also speaks of the corruption within the society it is set.Balram is the son of a poor rickshaw puller but has ideas above his station and wants to break out of the 'chicken coop' and sample the things that the rich take for granted but can he do this without committing a heinous crime and with it sacrificing his whole family. In the end he has to murder his employer to get what he wants and I found it hard to blame him.I visited India some years ago and was able to recognise at least some of the things that he desribes, at least from a tourist point of view, and given that the author comes from a very different, a privaleged, background in which he went to all the best schools I feel that he covers the subject matter extremely well indeed. I also liked the way that the book was writen in letters to the Chinese Premier prior to a state visit. Would definately reccommend this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was hugely entertaining. It paints a really rich picture of life in India, the struggle of the poor, the caste system and much more. However, at no point did this book feel like a study of Indian society- I found the narrator of the story absolutely hilarious. I was not expecting this book to be so funny.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have almost given up following awards for books because, increasingly, my response to the winning novels is something along the lines of "what the....?" It was with some trepidation therefore that I tackled the winner of last year's Man Booker Prize. I have little faith in this particular prize for several reasons not least of which is the observation that their website is utterly devoid of useful information like which books have won the prize each year. You have to go to Wikipedia for that. Such technological incompetence (or arrogance or whatever it is) grates on my nerves. More worryingly though is that the prize has been awarded to four of the worst books I have ever read including the indecipherable True History of the Kelly Gang (written deliberately without punctuation or grammar) (or characters or plot or a grain of sense in my humble opinion). The only redeeming feature of the entire exercise is that in 1982 the prize was given to Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark, a truly beautiful novel, but one decent decision 26 years ago doesn't fill me with confidence.

    In spite of all this I decided to read The White Tiger after hearing the author on a BBC interview. Actually I decided to listen to it (not because I wouldn't have read it but I happened to have an audible credit and nothing else took my fancy). For once (or for twice if I'm being totally fair) those Booker folks got it right. It is funny and sad and thought-provoking and entertaining and informative. In short it's a thoroughly great read.

    Structurally the book is a work of art. Balram Halwai, an Indian man, writes a series of emails to the Chinese Premier who is due to visit India soon. The letters reveal his personal history, and that of the broader society, in a haphazard but very engaging way. The tale of how Balram went from being the son of a rickshaw driver to one of Bangalore's most promising entrepreneurs is a kind of modern-day fable explored in the wider context of the massive changes taking place in India in recent history. Balram is a deeply complex character who at times I adored and at other times abhorred. But I always wanted to find out what he would do next.

    There is sadness in this book. If the imagery created by Balram's description of his father's death doesn't touch your heart then it's quite probable you don't have one. But, crucially, that emotion doesn't overwhelm the reader. There is also light and humour and, because of those things, the darker themes of the book, such as the impact of corruption on various strata of society and the gaping chasm between the lives lived by rich and poor, are more powerful than would be the case if the tone was consistently bleak. I can still recall reading John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (nearly 25 years ago now) which also tells of the truly awful things that happen to people who live in poverty but does so in such a way as to leave readers (well me) burdened with an overwhelming sense of despair and a desire to never consider the subjects raised by the book again. For me a work of fiction must entertain and engage first and foremost and only then will I consider any broader issues that the author may choose to raise.

    The White Tiger is well-written with rich observational details about a fascinating place in a time of social upheaval. At times it made me laugh and at others made me gasp and sometimes I sighed with sadness. But, most importantly of all, it was absolutely engrossing from start to finish.

    Audio book specific comments: Excellent narration by professional acress Bindya Solanki. I wondered if I would be be turned off by the fact she's female given that the story is narrated in the first person by a male but after about 5 minutes I completely forgot about the gender difference.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The theme is the globalization and the urban jungle, about how the collapse of local Eastern values collide with the Western world´s need of cheap workforce (outsourcing). The old leadership have sold out their old values to be able to send their sons and daughters to university in Europe and the USA, and Western companies outsourcing work do not offer welfare schemes to the workers (it is mainly the dropping of all responsibilities that make labour cheap). The People in between are caged - as symbolized with the white tiger - who has to become ferocious, in this story, the tiger becomes a murderer, to escape the slave-excistance he lives under. It is a warning, what will be let loose if the common man is to struggle for a life in surroundings where all human values are gone, all infrastructure, Eastern and Western, are corrupted. Probably 3 stars is unfair, to low, compared to most books, but the book must be compared to the rich tapestry Salman Rushdie wove in Midnight´s Children, and then it is not.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    You will laugh out loud more than once while reading this sardonic epistolary novel about contemporary India. The White Tiger is our main character and the letter writer who is writing a series of letters to the Chinese Premier on the occasion of a Chinese trade visit. He endeavors to explain the new economy and Indian entrepreneurialism with insouciant glee.

    It's his Horatio Alger story - but far different from any such story in America, as hard work is not rewarded. Corruption rules the economy in many ways and it's fitting, then, that his path to success took a detour into criminality. In essence, it's the main character's how to win friends and influence people - through corruption.

    This book has angered many in India for its unflattering picture of a country run by corruption and dependent on servitude. This makes it sound political and the corruption and poverty could make it sound grim, but it's not. There is such wit and humor and the main character has so much joy in life that the book is fun to read - and fascinating as well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Although I have read similar books, The White Tiger grew on me, especially at the end. The narrator is a sympathetic figure for the most part, as he is trodden upon and misused by his family, the society he is raised in and his employers. Often, as he points out himself, he is so used to being abused that he cannot tell that is what's going on. However, slowly he becomes aware of his low position and becomes more and more angry until he lashes out against the system and maneuvers to stake out a place for himself amongst India's new "entrepreneurs." However, at the end the novel clearly shows that in so doing he has become exactly as corrupt as those who kept him down all these years. This is the point at which the book began to distinguish itself from others I have read and gain some real emotional impact for me. I did think it would make a good movie. I wonder if anyone will try?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An interesting book that grows on you and has a lot to say about the world today!From The New YorkerIn this darkly comic début novel set in India, Balram, a chauffeur, murders his employer, justifying his crime as the act of a "social entrepreneur." In a series of letters to the Premier of China, in anticipation of the leader’s upcoming visit to Balram’s homeland, the chauffeur recounts his transformation from an honest, hardworking boy growing up in "the Darkness"—those areas of rural India where education and electricity are equally scarce, and where villagers banter about local elections "like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra"—to a determined killer. He places the blame for his rage squarely on the avarice of the Indian élite, among whom bribes are commonplace, and who perpetuate a system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of a few. Adiga’s message isn’t subtle or novel, but Balram’s appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations of the social order are both winning and unsettling.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pearl Ruled--Didn't like the narrator on audio.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The white tiger is the rarest of beasts, and that is how Balram Halwai regards himself. Raised by his tradition-bound family for a life of docile servitude, Munna (which means "boy"), as he is dubbed by his parents (in school he is randomly given the name Balram as a matter of convenience), grows up in undistinguished poverty in the Darkness--the poor part of India--which exists in perpetual enslavement to the Light--the wealthy part of India. But Balram is different, because he is unable to accept that serving the needs of a master is the only option that life holds out to him. After much scheming and sacrifice Balram achieves the success he covets, but success comes at huge cost, as we learn in his boisterous, high-octane narrative. The novel is framed as a letter that Balram is writing to the Premier of China, who is about to embark on a diplomatic mission to India in order to strengthen economic ties between the two nations. Balram wants the Chinese premier to know exactly what challenges he faces when doing business with his country, and his confessional narrative spares himself and India nothing. This is a country that depends for its survival on the vast majority remaining ignorant and impoverished, in order to provide an infinite supply of cheap labour for the rich minority. Corruption is endemic--no level of government can function without it. But Aravind Adiga's hero is smart enough to know that he cannot change anything. Balram learns that the trick to success is to become part of the system and turn it to his advantage, and to do this one must be ruthless and unsentimental. This is India as westerners rarely see it in fiction. In Balram's world there are no budding romances, no pretty faces warmed by the evening sun. In The White Tiger people are often unattractive, the streets are strewn with garbage, the walls are crawling with roaches, and servants are expected to serve jail time for their masters' misdeeds. It adds up to a scathing indictment of a society that does nothing for most of its citizens and yet expects them to carry the load. Adiga’s novel is more than just audacious. It is filled with bitter irony and black comedy, hilarious and horrifying in equal measure. Winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    How can you get rich in very short time span ,this book tells you a way a bad one which is only possible in a corrupted country like India.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Good fiction work by Arvind Adiga themed on changing socio-economic fabric in our country. The style of narration mixed with first-person and third-person doesnt make you lose interest.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    On a superficial level, reading the work The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga will introduce readers to a side of India that's much different than the usual glamour of contrived gurus and opulent Bollywood. The White Tiger is portrayal of the lingering, residual effects of India's caste system on its slow yet inevitable push toward technological modernity.Adiga's novel focuses on one man's breakthrough from "the Darkness" of backward rural poverty to "the Light" of urban entrepreneurship and what americans would probably describe as middle class luxury. The story centers on Balram Halwai's struggle to accept more of life than his caste will allow. Born without a true name, Balram progresses from lowly sweet-shop worker to personal driver and servant to becoming a "respectable" businessman of Bangalore. As with all good stories, the plot advances with the rationalization of one's choices and sacrifices. Sacrifices and choices involving losing one's family, one's humility, and murder.Adiga adds several layers of philosophical complexity throughout the novel. One the one hand, this a work outlining the persistence of slavery, not only in Indian culture, but modern culture as well. Balram is an aberration, an Indian who defies his culture not only in the pursuit of "entrepreneurship" but also the pursuit of being a free and true man. Adiga compares most Indians living in the lower castes to being chickens suffocating in a great coop, unable and even unwilling and perhaps proud of it, to better their lot in life. It is only when Balram finally realizes in his anger that the rich always get the best in life and the poor always get the leftovers that he makes the choices that cannot be reversed.The greater psychological slavery realized by Balram is perhaps akin to something Nietzsche may have said regarding god being dead. Adiga certainly puts it to the reader to decide whether Balram's choices are truly necessary to become a free man in a highly corrupt India. Whether they are or not, such is the plight in the darkest corners of India, for those truly grasping for a better life. It is certainly compelling, a story with choices that multitudes are facing every day. Excellent read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is a novel in the tradition of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Ellison's Invisible Man. That is to say it is not your traditional Indian novel, but one that presents the hero as the outsider, a man who is both literally and figuratively underground and invisible.The novel is narrated by Balram Halwai, "The White Tiger" who over seven nights shares his life story in the form of a letter to a Chinese official. In Balram the author has created an anti-hero who, with both charisma and charm, shares a very dark story about corruption, death and escape from the most extreme poverty into the wealth of successful entrepreneurship. The author uses the metaphors of light and dark to help us understand his traversal of a side of India seldom seen in most tales of that country. The theme of naming/identity also plays an important role as Balram takes on different names as he grows and changes from the simple munna to his eventual magisterial identity as "The White Tiger". The author has created a sort of modern journey, much as Ellison did where the hero overcomes his beginnings, and the corruption he finds everywhere, to create a new life for himself. It is, however, a new life that is strangely cut off from society so he remains an outsider to the end. The brilliant conception of the author impressed me as he presented believable characters, the realistic details about the best and worst of Indian society, and a clear depiction of the nature of the hero at the center of the story. There is black humor that is sometimes excruciatingly funny alongside true regret, and underlying it all hints of a fear (of the past) that cannot be completely eradicated. The author's voice is original and challenging as he takes you on a journey that, while seemingly straightforward, has many layers of meaning and leaves you with questions to ponder. Genuinely deserving of the Man Booker Prize of 2008, The White Tiger is both an engaging enjoyable read and a thought-provoking meditation on life.

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The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

The First Night

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 1 (just off Hosur Main Road)

Bangalore, India

Mr. Premier,

Sir.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

My ex-employer the late Mr. Ashok’s ex-wife, Pinky Madam, taught me one of these things; and at 11:32 p.m. today, which was about ten minutes ago, when the lady on All India Radio announced, Premier Jiabao is coming to Bangalore next week, I said that thing at once.

In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country I say it. Not that I have anything against great men. In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind. But whenever I see our prime minister and his distinguished sidekicks drive to the airport in black cars and get out and do namastes before you in front of a TV camera and tell you about how moral and saintly India is, I have to say that thing in English.

Now, you are visiting us this week, Your Excellency, aren’t you? All India Radio is usually reliable in these matters.

That was a joke, sir.

Ha!

That’s why I want to ask you directly if you really are coming to Bangalore. Because if you are, I have something important to tell you. See, the lady on the radio said, Mr. Jiabao is on a mission: he wants to know the truth about Bangalore.

My blood froze. If anyone knows the truth about Bangalore, it’s me.

Next, the lady announcer said, Mr. Jiabao wants to meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their success from their own lips.

She explained a little. Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs—we entrepreneurs—have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.

You hope to learn how to make a few Chinese entrepreneurs, that’s why you’re visiting. That made me feel good. But then it hit me that in keeping with international protocol, the prime minister and foreign minister of my country will meet you at the airport with garlands, small take-home sandalwood statues of Gandhi, and a booklet full of information about India’s past, present, and future.

That’s when I had to say that thing in English, sir. Out loud.

That was at 11:37 p.m. Five minutes ago.

I don’t just swear and curse. I’m a man of action and change. I decided right there and then to start dictating a letter to you.

To begin with, let me tell you of my great admiration for the ancient nation of China.

I read about your history in a book, Exciting Tales of the Exotic East, that I found on the pavement, back in the days when I was trying to get some enlightenment by going through the Sunday secondhand book market in Old Delhi. This book was mostly about pirates and gold in Hong Kong, but it did have some useful background information too: it said that you Chinese are great lovers of freedom and individual liberty. The British tried to make you their servants, but you never let them do it. I admire that, Mr. Premier.

I was a servant once, you see.

Only three nations have never let themselves be ruled by foreigners: China, Afghanistan, and Abyssinia. These are the only three nations I admire.

Out of respect for the love of liberty shown by the Chinese people, and also in the belief that the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, cell phone usage, and drug abuse, I offer to tell you, free of charge, the truth about Bangalore.

By telling you my life’s story.

See, when you come to Bangalore, and stop at a traffic light, some boy will run up to your car and knock on your window, while holding up a bootlegged copy of an American business book, wrapped carefully in cellophane and with a title like:

TEN SECRETS OF BUSINESS SUCCESS!

or

BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR IN SEVEN EASY DAYS!

Don’t waste your money on those American books. They’re so yesterday.

I am tomorrow.

In terms of formal education, I may be somewhat lacking. I never finished school, to put it bluntly. Who cares! I haven’t read many books, but I’ve read all the ones that count. I know by heart the works of the four greatest poets of all time—Rumi, Iqbal, Mirza Ghalib, and a fourth fellow whose name I forget. I am a self-taught entrepreneur.

That’s the best kind there is, trust me.

When you have heard the story of how I got to Bangalore and became one of its most successful (though probably least known) businessmen, you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious twenty-first century of man.

The century, more specifically, of the yellow and the brown man.

You and me.

It is a little before midnight now, Mr. Jiabao. A good time for me to talk.

I stay up the whole night, Your Excellency. And there’s no one else in this 150-square-foot office of mine. Just me and a chandelier above me, although the chandelier has a personality of its own. It’s a huge thing, full of small diamond-shaped glass pieces, just like the ones they used to show in the films of the 1970s. Though it’s cool enough at night in Bangalore, I’ve put a midget fan—five cobwebby blades—right above the chandelier. See, when it turns, the small blades chop up the chandelier’s light and fling it across the room. Just like the strobe light at the best discos in Bangalore.

This is the only 150-square-foot space in Bangalore with its own chandelier! But it’s still a hole in the wall, and I sit here the whole night.

The entrepreneur’s curse. He has to watch his business all the time.

Now I’m going to turn the midget fan on, so that the chandelier’s light spins around the room.

I am relaxed, sir. As I hope you are.

Let us begin.

Before we do that, sir, the phrase in English that I learned from my ex-employer the late Mr. Ashok’s ex-wife Pinky Madam is:

What a fucking joke.


Now, I no longer watch Hindi films—on principle—but back in the days when I used to, just before the movie got started, either the number 786 would flash against the black screen—the Muslims think this is a magic number that represents their god—or else you would see the picture of a woman in a white sari with gold sovereigns dripping down to her feet, which is the goddess Lakshmi, of the Hindus.

It is an ancient and venerated custom of people in my country to start a story by praying to a Higher Power.

I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some god’s arse.

Which god’s arse, though? There are so many choices.

See, the Muslims have one god.

The Christians have three gods.

And we Hindus have 36,000,000 gods.

Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to choose from.

Now, there are some, and I don’t just mean Communists like you, but thinking men of all political parties, who think that not many of these gods actually exist. Some believe that none of them exist. There’s just us and an ocean of darkness around us. I’m no philosopher or poet, how would I know the truth? It’s true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work—much like our politicians—and yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year. That’s not to say that I don’t respect them, Mr. Premier! Don’t you ever let that blasphemous idea into your yellow skull. My country is the kind where it pays to play it both ways: the Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, at the same time.

So: I’m closing my eyes, folding my hands in a reverent namaste, and praying to the gods to shine light on my dark story.

Bear with me, Mr. Jiabao. This could take a while.

How quickly do you think you could kiss 36,000,004 arses?


Done.

My eyes are open again.

11:52 p.m.—and it really is time to start.

A statutory warning—as they say on cigarette packs—before we begin.

One day, as I was driving my ex-employers Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam in their Honda City car, Mr. Ashok put a hand on my shoulder, and said, Pull over to the side. Following this command, he leaned forward so close that I could smell his aftershave—it was a delicious, fruitlike smell that day—and said, politely as ever, Balram, I have a few questions to ask you, all right?

Yes, sir, I said.

Balram, Mr. Ashok asked, how many planets are there in the sky?

I gave the answer as best as I could.

Balram, who was the first prime minister of India?

And then: Balram, what is the difference between a Hindu and a Muslim?

And then: What is the name of our continent?

Mr. Ashok leaned back and asked Pinky Madam, Did you hear his answers?

Was he joking? she asked, and my heart beat faster, as it did every time she said something.

"No. That’s really what he thinks the correct answers are."

She giggled when she heard this: but his face, which I saw reflected in my rearview mirror, was serious.

The thing is, he probably has . . . what, two, three years of schooling in him? He can read and write, but he doesn’t get what he’s read. He’s half-baked. The country is full of people like him, I’ll tell you that. And we entrust our glorious parliamentary democracy—he pointed at me—"to characters like these. That’s the whole tragedy of this country."

He sighed.

All right, Balram, start the car again.

That night, I was lying in bed, inside my mosquito net, thinking about his words. He was right, sir—I didn’t like the way he had spoken about me, but he was right.

The Autobiography of a Half-Baked Indian. That’s what I ought to call my life’s story.

Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you’ll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep—all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with.

The story of my upbringing is the story of how a half-baked fellow is produced.

But pay attention, Mr. Premier! Fully formed fellows, after twelve years of school and three years of university, wear nice suits, join companies, and take orders from other men for the rest of their lives.

Entrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay.


To give you the basic facts about me—origin, height, weight, known sexual deviations, etc.—there’s no beating that poster. The one the police made of me.

Calling myself Bangalore’s least known success story isn’t entirely true, I confess. About three years ago, when I became, briefly, a person of national importance owing to an act of entrepreneurship, a poster with my face on it found its way to every post office, railway station, and police station in this country. A lot of people saw my face and name back then. I don’t have the original paper copy, but I’ve downloaded an image to my silver Macintosh laptop—I bought it online from a store in Singapore, and it really works like a dream—and if you’ll wait a second, I’ll open the laptop, pull that scanned poster up, and read from it directly . . .

But a word about the original poster. I found it in a train station in Hyderabad, in the period when I was traveling with no luggage—except for one very heavy red bag—and coming down from Delhi to Bangalore. I had the original right here in this office, in the drawer of this desk, for a full year. One day the cleaning boy was going through my stuff, and he almost found the poster. I’m not a sentimental man, Mr. Jiabao. Entrepreneurs can’t afford to be. So I threw the thing out—but before that, I got someone to teach me scanning—and you know how we Indians just take to technology like ducks to water. It took just an hour, or two hours. I am a man of action, sir. And here it is, on the screen, in front of me:

Assistance Sought in Search for Missing Man

General Public is hereby informed that the man in the picture namely Balram Halwai alias MUNNA son of Vikram Halwai rickshaw-puller is wanted for questioning. Age: Between 25 and 35. Complexion: Blackish. Face: Oval. Height: Five feet four inches estimated. Build: Thin, small.

Well, that’s not exactly right anymore, sir. The blackish face bit is still true—although I’m of half a mind to try one of those skin-whitener creams they’ve launched these days so Indian men can look white as Westerners—but the rest, alas, is completely useless. Life in Bangalore is good—rich food, beer, nightclubs, so what can I say! Thin and small—ha! I am in better shape these days! Fat and potbellied would be more accurate now.

But let us go on, we don’t have all night. I’d better explain this bit right now.

Balram Halwai alias MUNNA…

See, my first day in school, the teacher made all the boys line up and come to his desk so he could put our names down in his register. When I told him what my name was, he gaped at me:

Munna? That’s not a real name.

He was right: it just means boy.

That’s all I’ve got, sir, I said.

It was true. I’d never been given a name.

Didn’t your mother name you?

She’s very ill, sir. She lies in bed and spews blood. She’s got no time to name me.

And your father?

He’s a rickshaw-puller, sir. He’s got no time to name me.

Don’t you have a granny? Aunts? Uncles?

They’ve got no time either.

The teacher turned aside and spat—a jet of red paan splashed the ground of the classroom. He licked his lips.

Well, it’s up to me, then, isn’t it? He passed his hand through his hair and said, "We’ll call you . . . Ram. Wait—don’t we have a Ram in this class? I don’t want any confusion. It’ll be Balram. You know who Balram was, don’t you?"

No, sir.

He was the sidekick of the god Krishna. Know what my name is?

No, sir.

He laughed. Krishna.

I came home that day and told my father that the schoolteacher had given me a new name. He shrugged. If it’s what he wants, then we’ll call you that.

So I was Balram from then on. Later on, of course, I picked up a third name. But we’ll get to that.

Now, what kind of place is it where people forget to name their children? Referring back to the poster:

The suspect comes from the village of Laxmangarh, in the…

Like all good Bangalore stories, mine begins far away from Bangalore. You see, I am in the Light now, but I was born and raised in Darkness.

But this is not a time of day I talk about, Mr. Premier!

I am talking of a place in India, at least a third of the country, a fertile place, full of rice fields and wheat fields and ponds in the middle of those fields choked with lotuses and water lilies, and water buffaloes wading through the ponds and chewing on the lotuses and lilies. Those who live in this place call it the Darkness. Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well off. But the river brings darkness to India—the black river.

Which black river am I talking of—which river of Death, whose banks are full of rich, dark, sticky mud whose grip traps everything that is planted in it, suffocating and choking and stunting it?

Why, I am talking of Mother Ganga, daughter of the Vedas, river of illumination, protector of us all, breaker of the chain of birth and rebirth. Everywhere this river flows, that area is the Darkness.

One fact about India is that you can take almost anything you hear about the country from the prime minister and turn it upside down and then you will have the truth about that thing. Now, you have heard the Ganga called the river of emancipation, and hundreds of American tourists come each year to take photographs of naked sadhus at Hardwar or Benaras, and our prime minister will no doubt describe it that way to you, and urge you to take a dip in it.

No!—Mr. Jiabao, I urge you not to dip in the Ganga, unless you want your mouth full of feces, straw, soggy parts of human bodies, buffalo carrion, and seven different kinds of industrial acids.

I know all about the Ganga, sir—when I was six or seven or eight years old (no one in my village knows his exact age), I went to the holiest spot on the banks of the Ganga—the city of Benaras. I remember going down the steps of a downhill road in the holy city of Benaras, at the rear of a funeral procession carrying my mother’s body to the Ganga.

Kusum, my granny, was leading the procession. Sly old Kusum! She had this habit of rubbing her forearms hard when she felt happy, as if it were a piece of ginger she was grating to release grins from. Her teeth were all gone, but this only made her grin more cunning. She had grinned her way into control of the house; every son and daughter-in-law lived in fear of her.

My father and Kishan, my brother, stood behind her, to bear the front end of the cane bed which bore the corpse; my uncles, who are Munnu, Jayram, Divyram, and Umesh, stood behind, holding up the other end. My mother’s body had been wrapped from head to toe in a saffron silk cloth, which was covered in rose petals and jasmine garlands. I don’t think she had ever had such a fine thing to wear in her life. (Her death was so grand that I knew, all at once, that her life must have been miserable. My family was guilty about something.) My aunts—Rabri, Shalini, Malini, Luttu, Jaydevi, and Ruchi—kept turning around and clapping their hands for me to catch up to them. I remember swinging my hands and singing, Shiva’s name is the truth!

We walked past temple after temple, praying to god after god, and then went in a single file between a red temple devoted to Hanuman and an open gymnasium where three body builders heaved rusted weights over their heads. I smelled the river before I saw it: a stench of decaying flesh rising from my right. I sang louder:  . . . the only truth!

Then there was a gigantic noise: firewood being split. A wooden platform had been built by the edge of the ghat, just above the water; logs were piled up on the platform, and men with axes were smashing the logs. Chunks of wood were being built into funeral pyres on the steps of the ghat that went down into the water; four bodies were burning on the ghat steps when we got there. We waited our turn.

In the distance, an island of white sand glistened in the sunlight, and boats full of people were heading to that island. I wondered if my mother’s soul had flown there, to that shining place in the river.

I have mentioned that my mother’s body was wrapped in a silk cloth. This cloth was now pulled over her face; and logs of wood, as many as we could pay for, were piled on top of the body. Then the priest set my mother on fire.

She was a good, quiet girl the day she came to our home, Kusum said, as she put a hand on my face. I was not the one who wanted any fighting.

I shook her hand off my face. I watched my mother.

As the fire ate away the silk, a pale foot jerked out, like a living thing; the toes, which were melting in the heat, began to curl up, offering resistance to what was being done to them. Kusum shoved the foot into the fire, but it would not burn. My heart began to race. My mother wasn’t going to let them destroy her.

Underneath the platform with the piled-up fire logs, there was a giant oozing mound of black mud where the river washed into the shore. The mound was littered with ribbons of jasmine, rose petals, bits of satin, charred bones; a pale-skinned dog was crawling and sniffing through the petals and satin and charred bones.

I looked at the ooze, and I looked at my mother’s flexed foot.

This mud was holding her back: this big, swelling mound of black ooze. She was trying to fight the black mud; her toes were flexed and resisting; but the mud was sucking her in, sucking her in. It was so thick, and more of it was being created every moment as the river washed into the ghat. Soon she would become part of the black mound and the pale-skinned dog would start licking her.

And then I understood: this was the real god of Benaras—this black mud of the Ganga into which everything died, and decomposed, and was reborn from, and died into again. The same would happen to me when I died and they brought me here. Nothing would get liberated here.

I stopped breathing.

This was the first time in my life I fainted.

I haven’t been back to see the Ganga since then: I’m leaving that river for the American tourists!

…comes from the village of Laxmangarh, in the district of Gaya.

This is a famous district—world-famous. Your nation’s history has been shaped by my district, Mr. Jiabao. Surely you’ve heard of Bodh Gaya—the town where the Lord Buddha sat under a tree and found his enlightenment and started Buddhism, which then spread to the whole world, including China—and where is it, but right here in my home district! Just a few miles from Laxmangarh!

I wonder if the Buddha walked through Laxmangarh—some people say he did. My own feeling is that he ran through it—as fast as he could—and got to the other side—and never looked back!

There is a small branch of the Ganga that flows just outside Laxmangarh; boats come down from the world outside, bringing supplies every Monday. There is one street in the village; a bright strip of sewage splits it into two. On either side of the ooze, a market: three more or less identical shops selling more or less identically adulterated and stale items of rice, cooking oil, kerosene, biscuits, cigarettes, and jaggery. At the end of the market is a tall, whitewashed, conelike tower, with black intertwining snakes painted on all its sides—the temple. Inside, you will find an image of a saffron-colored creature, half man half monkey: this is Hanuman, everyone’s favorite god in the Darkness. Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion.

These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us, Mr. Jiabao. Understand, now, how hard it is for a man to win his freedom in India.

So much for the place. Now for the people. Your Excellency, I am proud to inform you that Laxmangarh is your typical Indian village paradise, adequately supplied with electricity, running water, and working telephones; and that the children of my village, raised on a nutritious diet of meat, eggs, vegetables, and lentils, will be found, when examined with tape measure and scales, to match up to the minimum height and weight standards set by the United Nations and other organizations whose treaties our prime minister has signed and whose forums

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