The White Tiger
Ratings81
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings81
Average rating3.8
The White Tiger Is A Compelling First Novel About The New India That Is Growing Roots All Around Us, In Unexpected And Often Ominous Ways. '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, Booker-Shortlisted Author Of The Reluctant Fundamentalist 'In The Grand Illusions Of A Rising India, Aravind Adiga Has Found A Subject Gogol Might Have Envied. With Remorselessly And Delightfully Mordant Wit The White Tiger Anatomises The Fantastic Cravings Of The Rich; It Evokes, Too, With Startling Accuracy And Tenderness, The No Less Desperate Struggles Of The Deprived.' Pankaj Mishra 'Unlike Almost Any Other Indian Novel You Might Have Read In Recent Years, This Page-Turner Offers A Completely Bald, Angry, Unadorned Portrait Of The Country As Seen From The Bottom Of The Heap; There'S Not A Sniff Of Saffron Or A Swirl Of Sari Anywhere. Narrated By Balram, A Self-Styled Entrepreneur Who Has Murdered His Employer, The Book Follows His Progress From Child Labourer, Via Humiliation As A Servant And Driver, To A Mysterious New Life In Bangalore. Balram Himself Is An Enticing Figure, Whose Reasons For Murder Become Completely Understandable By The End, But Even More Impressive Is The Nitty-Gritty Of Indian Life That Adiga Unearths: The Corruption, The Class System, The Sheer Petty Viciousness. The Indian Tourist Board Won'T Be Pleased, But You'Ll Read It In A Trice And Find Yourself Gripped.' Sunday Times, London
Reviews with the most likes.
“Why can't [insert country here] get their act together? It's so simple! If only they would [insert solution] ...” We've all thought that some time, about some country or another. It should be so simple! Adiga shows, vividly, why it's not. His depiction of modern-day India shows the cultural stasis, class boundaries, corruption, resentment that shapes its people and all their interactions. The image of broken manacles is a frequent ironic motif. As a child of a different third-world country, I found myself nodding in recognition at the world he describes. So many possibilities, so tragically limited by its own people. I wonder what first-worlders will think of the world he describes?I've never read Fukuyama's [b:Trust 57980 Trust The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity Francis Fukuyama http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51djbFJ7b%2BL.SL75.jpg 56475], but I think it's time for me to do so now. I expect to find many parallels.(Oh, a note about the audio CD: the reader is exceptional.)
It was a good book. I don't like stories told by those of questionable moral character. But otherwise an interesting story
I usually connect novels set in India with magic, colour and vibrancy. This book certainly started out that way, but as you read further a new gritty image of the country appears. It is dark and it is desperate. Balram is mostly a likable character (albeit a murderer) whose situation as a mistreated and unappreciated servant sees him spiral out of the “Darkness” and into the “Light.” Is it social justice though? What is the price of freedom?
I have a soft spot for books, like Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, that tell you their big plot twist right up front. We know at the end of the first chapter that our narrator Balram, a former servant turned entrepreneur in India, killed his former master. What unfolds over the rest of the book is the story of why. It's the story of India in the modern day, a place of desperate poverty but also extravagant wealth, where ancient temples are just as much a part of life as smartphones. Balram is born into poverty in a rural area, and even though he seems destined to become a laborer, he resists the forces (including his family) that try to keep him in the underclass as long as he can. He finds himself a position as a driver for an upper-class landowner, and eventually moves with one of the landowner's sons to New Delhi to be his driver there.
New Delhi fundamentally changes both that son, Ashok, and Balram. Ashok has been educated in America, and treats his servants more or less like people. As he gets more and more sucked into the mire of his family's business (they're in the coal industry, and Ashok does a lot of running around with briefcases full of money to drop off with various politicians and officials), he becomes harder and harsher. When Balram is nearly forced to take the fall for a bad accident caused by Ashok's wife's drunk driving, Balram realizes that even as far as he's come from his roots, he's still not really safe. As long as he's poor and a servant, he'll always be expendable. But in order to get out of his situation, he needs money, and the money he has the easiest access to? Those briefcases that he's driving Ashok around with.
It's a dark satire, and after reading a lot of Serious Literature, I appreciated its wit and liveliness even more than I otherwise might have. But I would have enjoyed it no matter what. It's an epistolary novel (Balram writes to the prime minister of China, who is visiting India at the time, to explain India's entrepreneurial spirit), which allows it to skip around in time a little for maximum impact...we know that he's committed murder and gone on to start his own business, but how (and why) did he do it? How did he get away with it? What exactly does he do now? The organic tension propels the book forward without being too mysterious. Balram is an indelible character, and I really appreciated the way that Adiga developed Ashok as well, portraying his moral decay even though we only see him through Balram's eyes. It's a quick read that manages to be thought-provoking while still being entertaining.
