The White Tiger: A Novel - Dark Publications

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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.

Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Debut novel about India a fantastically dark read May 2, 2008
27 out of 32 found this review helpful

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is the compelling story of an Indian man trying to break free of societal chains and expectations. Balram Halwai lived in the Darkness, a small village, in India under the thumb of his grandmother and the rules of his culture, until he is hired as the driver for a landlord who brings him into the Light of Delhi. The story is told through a letter Balram is writing to a Chinese official to show him entrepreneurial spirit. Balram is intelligent, which gains him the nickname White Tiger in his home town, but because of his family name and no education, he can expect nothing greater than being a virtual slave to his boss. He has dreams of something, anything different than the life laid out in front of him, but they only begin to take root when his boss changes. As long as his boss is honorable in his actions to Balram, he can accept his lot in life, but when the man starts abusing him and sleeping with prostitutes, Balram sees that he is just as corrupt as the rest of the system and decides to break free, utilizing violence to do so. Despite Balram's deplorable behavior, you can't help but root for him and want him to break the cycle of back-breaking labor and destitute poverty that has followed his family for generations. He's a funny narrator whose descriptions of both monetary and moral poverty alternately make you laugh and cry. Adiga is a fresh voice and a stellar writer.

5 out of 5 stars

From The Darkness into the light October 13, 2008
23 out of 26 found this review helpful

What's astonishing about "The White Tiger" isn't Adiga's depiction of the social and economic inequalities of contemporary India. Other writers--Rohinton Mistry in " A Fine Balance," Kiran Desai in "The Inheritance of Loss," among others--have written very good novels about this. What is astonishing is the economy with which he does it. Novels about societal inequities are often lengthy; think of a novel by Dickens or Stowe or Dreiser or Steinbeck, in which the accumulating weight of the details of suffering creates a powerful impression. Adiga creates two disparate worlds, Balram's tiny native village in the Darkness and the sliver of Delhi he inhabits in his life as a driver for the urbanized son of the village landlord. The first is a place of absolute hopelessness presided over by allegorical figures of corrupt wealth: the four landlords known as The Stork, The Buffalo, The Wild Boar, and The Raven. From afar (and occasionally up close) The Great Socialist is re-elected again and again through promises of change (always unkept) and corrupt electioneering. Balram's family, it is clear, will be poor forever. The city, for Balram, consists of the glittery American-style mall (which he can't enter); the air-conditioned Honda that he drives; and the red bag stuffed with cash for politicians with power over The Stork's businesses. These two settings (and the human animals that inhabit them) set out a chasm that is utterly unbridgeable. Thus, when Balram murders his master (a fact established at the very beginning of the novel), it seems less a tragedy than the outcome of impeccable logic. I kept thinking of Dreiser's Sister Carrie, another small town character who migrates to the city. But where Dreiser is intent on portraying Carrie as someone crushed by grinding social forces far beyond her control, Adiga deftly portrays Balram as an entrepreneur, one whose tiger's leap across the chasm is equally the product of social forces he cannot control. This leap leads to a 21st century ascent (in social and economic terms) not a 19th century descent.
Note on 10/14/08: Hooray! I've just read that Adiga won the Man Booker prize. I would have hated to have had to choose between a book as fine as this one and another nominee, Sebastian Barry's "The Secret Scripture."

5 out of 5 stars

A Voice Like Dave Eggers May 30, 2008
15 out of 19 found this review helpful

Great fiction writing is like acting and directing at the same time. The novelist needs to create believable personalities, original voices, and plot. The character that Adiga created here, Balram the servant cum businessman, speaks in an original voice that sounds lyrical, devilish, believable.

On the surface, the novel is a 250+ page letter from Balram to a visiting Chinese diplomat. On the micro-level of words and sentences, Adiga comes up with original character development that convinces the reader we have blood and flesh. Yet it's fiction. The story is a study in character, and character development seems to be Adiga's main strength. The story's plot and setting rests on Adiga's firm background as a journalist covering India for Time magazine. Adiga is familiar with both the poor and new India, and in the novel he contrasts the two societies to great effect. In the end, it's the conflict between these two societies that is the crux of the story: "Dark" and "Light" India are constantly at war, yet the two extremes also seem to share certain values. In the novel, both the rich and the poor are corrupt, resort to bribery, sleep with prostitutes, cheat, lie, steal -- and even murder -- to get to the top. In the end, this comparing and contrasting of values is what this book is about.

As an aid to character development, Adiga gives animal nicknames to the rich landlords that serve as supporting characters. Given that the poor in India tend to be illiterate and relate to people and things according to their environment more than through academic means, animal nicknames seemed like an ingenious character development ploy. The novel is filled with little elements like this that work well.

At the end of the novel (after Balram kills his master and becomes the narrating entrepreneur of the story) the plot tends to wrap up rather quickly (I will not give it away here); however, although it wraps up quickly, it is a satisfying ending because it completes the theme of the book, which is the contrast and similarities in values between the rich and poor in India.

3 out of 5 stars

No Moral or Morals September 14, 2008
11 out of 21 found this review helpful

I enjoyed this tale of clashing cultures in India, the lower caste beggars of Sikar and the newly wealthy entrepreneurs in Bangalore. The car driver narrator is quite a colorful fellow, with his ruminations on life, politics, corruption, justice, fairness and revenge. His tale is illuminated by many memorable turns of phrase and eye-opening naive observations, and his utter lack of remorse is exciting.

Yet at the same time the novel is far from perfect. The conceit of framing the novel as a letter to the Premier of China is clunky and unhelpful. The point-of-view of the narrator keeps shifting, from naive to worldly as if the author couldn't quite commit to his voice. The action in the novel, as other reviewers have pointed out, is all shoehorned into the last 40 pages. Finally, the overall arc of the book contains no message that I could discern, but simply tells a story without a moral.

In short, "The White Tiger" is one of those books that you enjoy reading but not enough to recommend to others.

5 out of 5 stars

A Trumpet Blast of a Literary Voice May 3, 2008
9 out of 15 found this review helpful

Ripped from the dark heart of modern-day India, comes debut novelist, Aravind Adiga, a hip Gunga Din for the millennium, blowing a hot, Ornette Cileman riff of a novel, from the top of a dirty golden dome, that is at once visceral, witty, irreverent, bloody, and ultimately, satisfying.
By the first few pages of his book, "The White Tiger," the reader quickly forgets about finding a lyrical, fragrant India, similar to the novels of M.M. Kaye, and Vikram Seth. This is a down and dirty India, much like it's mother of a river, the Ganges. The story, as put down by it's narrator, the complex, Balram Halwai, who has risen from desperate poverty
to become a chauffer for two rich Pomeranians, rails against India's class system, and corruption, with a searing, and damning sarcasm. Adiga's haunting trumpet blast of a literary voice lingers with the reader long after the final page.
Will India be ready for his next book? I know I will.
This is one hell-of-a read.

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