BOOK REVIEW: Aravind Adiga's THE WHITE TIGER

Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger won the 2008 Man Booker Prize, the most prestigious individual book prize in English (only writers from Commonwealth countries are eligible).

I got the book for Christmas in 2008 and finally read it over my summer vacation in August 2009.

The White Tiger is a book about contemporary Indian life, told in a very readable, darkly comic style by a prose magician.

It is one of the few Booker prizewinners that can easily be read in an afternoon. (Or even read at all. I still have a copy of Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children, barely begun, no my bookshelf.) Having been to India myself in the last 5 years I am always curious to see depictions of the country in film and novels. This was one of (not the most important) things which made Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (read my review here) so enjoyable to me. I'm not saying if it wasn't set in India the movie would not have been interesting to me; I'm saying that the added India element enriches the work in my eyes, thanks to my interest in the subject.

Anyway, Aviga's work is written in the form of a series of letters to the Premier of China (The White Tiger of the book's title) and follows the adventures of Balram Halwai, a perfectly ordinary Indian man from a typical Indian village who happens to be the narrator of the book--and a murderer.

Adiga has harsh social commentary on almost every aspect of Indian society, from elections to malls to religion (so many gods, so little time!) which has made the book somewhat controversial in some circles, presumably even more so now that it has been awarded the Booker.

In the end, though, there's something not quite satisfying about The White Tiger. After you finish it, you feel like you are ready to read another book, about half an hour later.

Title: The White Tiger

Author: Aravind Aviga
Publisher: Free Press
Date: October 14, 2008.
Length: 352 pages.

PLOT: B.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B-.
WRITING: A-.

OVERALL GRADE: B/B+.