The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Search Amazon for other books by or about Aravind Adiga. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

In a country, India, in which a very small proportion of people enjoy enormous wealth and privilege, why is it that the remaining 99% who are obliged to serve and defer to them accept their lot, miserable though it is? This is one of the principal themes in this excellent first novel by Aravind Adiga, which was recently adjudged the winner of the prestigious "Man Booker Prize" for 2008. The plot follows the progress of Balram Halwai, a young man whose parents were (as the joke goes) too poor to give him a name--in fact, the lack of a name portrays a great deal about the value of the individual child in a society which (over) privileges family rights and relationships to the detriment of the individual. Born into grinding rural poverty, Balram dreams of making his escape into a life of respectability, when people will look up to him and indeed his family. Through his own endeavour--which he later understands to be the entrepreneurialism which will lift him from poverty--he achieves this ambition at least to some extent by becoming the driver to a rich man, the son of one of the landlords whose depredations have bedeviled Balram's village for generations, as well as his Americanised wife, the delightfully named Pinky Madam.

Yet this turns out not to be enough for Balram, who becomes increasingly disenchanted with the nature of society as revealed to him by his new position and, indeed, by what it has done to his "Master." It is made clear early in the book that Balram kills the Master and much of the subsequent action serves to help explain what drove him to such a terrible crime. This element of the plot has both existential and Nietzschean aspects to it, for those readers who enjoy philosophy, or else might be read in class struggle terms. Or, indeed, in purely human terms--this is a sufficiently good book to be considered seriously on several levels. Balram was named the "White Tiger" by a government school inspector who identified his superior intellect and diligence and went away to recommend him for a scholarship--shortly before the young Balram was obliged to enter service in a tea shop to pay for the dowry that was provided for the wedding of a cousin by borrowing from one of the landowners. Tea shop service is appropriate for him because his surname identifies him as member of a caste that is responsible for making sweets and desserts. The struggle to avoid the destiny of the caste system is a further aspect of this book worthy of consideration.

Analysing the book in its political and social aspects tends to make it sound as if the text is dense and difficult to read. This is quite the opposite of the truth, since the narrative skips along with good pace and is not just highly readable but often very funny. Anyone who has visited India will immediately recognise many of the scenes depicted and even those who know nothing of the place will soon come to identify some of the characteristics of the country and the people who live there. This does not, of course, mean that the book is perfect--some sections do read as if they were slightly shoehorned into the plot in order to show every aspect of society that Adiga wishes to display and the central conceit by which Balram confides his thoughts in a series of letters to the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao suffers from the usual problems that beset epistolary novels. Nevertheless, this is on the whole a compelling and fascinating book which takes its place as one of the best novels of the year. Highly recommended.