| The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize) | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 228 reviews)
Sales Rank: 53
Category: Book
Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Label: Free Press
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416562605
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9781416562603
ASIN: 1416562605
Publication Date: October 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 223 more reviews...
 illogical, much inferior to slumdog and six suspects July 1, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
there is no valid reason for the protagonist to kill his master, which is the high point of the fiction. he could have just stolen the money and disappeared. killing him just didn't further his goal. that's totally illogical and makes the work lame. for good stories set in the reality of india, slumdog and six suspects are much more entertaining with no sacrifice in depth.Six Suspects: A Novel
 Breaking Broken Ground June 28, 2009
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
You've probably heard the praise. On my book can be found the following blurbs:
"One of the most powerful books I've read in decades. No hyperbole."
"Fresh, funny, different."
"...unsettling."
"...an original voice and vision."
"The future of the novel..."
"...as compelling as it is persuasive..."
Before I go off on a rant, let me say the following:
Decent story. Well-drawn protagonist. Textbook story arc with your standard complications leading to a climax that would be predictable if it wasn't already spelled out for you in chapter one. Clear, concise writing that is sometimes uneven; the narrator is the "white tiger," Balram Halwai, a self-made Indian entrepreneur who got where he is with just a little education and a whole lot of betrayal. In the midst of his tale-telling, Balram occasionally uses words and phrases that don't jive with his working class voice, but these moments are rare. Not altogether rewarding or disappointing, this is the kind of book you'd expect to be produced by one of those learn-by-mail writing programs.
THE RANT: Of the adjectives listed in the quotes above (or among the two dozen others in my book), the only one that I think comes close is "funny." There are amusing moments in the story, but nothing side-splitting. The humor is mostly sardonic. So why is this book getting such praise?
Virtually every glowing review mentions how the book is an "eye-opener." One review calls it the "perfect antidote to lyrical India." First of all, does lyrical India NEED an antidote? Before I ever heard of this book, I assumed India was rife with corruption and social shackles (hello, caste system). Am I the only reader who already knew this sort of thing went on there? Perhaps I'm jaded. I should stop reading the news. And teaching history.
And that's the other thing: is it possible there's a country where there isn't corruption or social abuse? If so, that's a book worth writing about. How does such a place exist, and can it be duplicated anywhere else? I'm not suggesting that India's corruption is not as bad as Africa's, Russia's, China's, Korea's, Central America's, South America's, the US's. Nor am I suggesting that the corruption in India (or ANYWHERE) isn't worthy of a book.
All I'm suggesting is that the book isn't amazing by virtue of its subject matter alone. If you pretend for a moment that rigged elections, foreign-funded civil wars, and an indentured lower class is old news, this book isn't anything special. It's a paint-by-numbers plot told with very few frills and too much foreshadowing. There is no real tension or conclusion to the tale. If the narrator had been omniscient, most of the book would've sounded like the script for a newscast.
Adiga has potential, since even getting the fundamentals of writing down isn't something most people are capable of. But let's hope his next book earns praise not for his subject matter, but for how he portrays that subject matter. This white tiger just didn't have enough stripes for me.
 Excellent read June 24, 2009
Intriguing story, written in an unusual way which allows you (the reader) to question the sanity of the narrator and to wonder how about it all really turned out. Recommended.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga June 18, 2009
In his Booker Prize winning novel, The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga has achieved success where other illustrious writers have fallen short in recent years. Kiran Desai, Monica Ali and Salman Rushdie have all entered the fray and achieved considerable success of their own around themes rooted in the ramshackle, disorganised, free-for-all, cost-cutter basement of globalisation. Characters in their novels might live in New York or London, but their thoughts continue to live in rural south Asia. They might, through their labour, service the desires of the First World rich, but their personal priorities might remain rooted in the concerns of Third World poor. I accept that the grouping of these authors is unfair, since Salman Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown is an overtly political book, whereas Monica Ali's is largely domestic and Kiran Desai's is familiar. But they do all share an overt interest in characters who have left their humble, Third World origins for a First World status that is less than desirable, though their motives might be diverse.
In The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga tries a different tack, and achieves much. The scenario is unlikely, deliberately comic. The book presents a narrative - apparently constructed in just seven evenings at a personal computer - by one Belram, a man with origins in a poor area of an Indian countryside he calls Darkness. Essentially, there are seven blogs or emails addressed to Wen Jiabao via the Premier's Office, Beijing, China in which the first person narrator tells his story. Belram, presumably, believes that the Chinese people, via their leader, need advice on how to succeed in the globalised twenty-first century. Since Belram has indeed succeeded, he wants to share his experience as potential assistance to the most populous nation on earth.
Belram's rise can be listed without jeopardising the potential reader's interest or involvement with the book. He was of utterly poor rural origin, but luckily - and also perhaps rather deviously - secured a job as a driver for the middle-class, urban Mr Ashok. By the end of the tale Belram has his own business in Bangalore, a place as far from his own origins as any international destination. He now owns a taxi fleet that services the anti-social working hours of the growing city's relocated call centres, whose First World cost-cutter owners provide the financial umbrella-shade in which budding entrepreneurs like Belram may shelter and prosper. Thus he eases himself a rung or two up the social and economic ladder. If only the elevation might have happened without treading on others...
The White Tiger is a delightful and engaging book. The narrator's humour and world-outlook are both entertaining and stimulating. The book's improbable structure presents no problem whatsoever once Belram's engaging style is established. His story is simple, devious, credible and incredible in one, and perhaps as close to a truth as one might ever approach. Literature is full of schemers and opportunists. Anti-heroes, however, rarely convince. Belram, on the other hand, almost demands we share his success via emulation, and I encourage all readers to enter his world on his terms.
Highly recommended! June 15, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book really illustrates the clash between old India, saddled with class (and caste) struggles, and new India characterized by Western-style entrepeneurism and greed. It's interesting to see a character transform from one who was enslaved since birth by societal conventions to one who so eagerly exploits others when finally given the chance.
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