The White Tiger

Jul 29, 2012 Nandakishore Varma rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Before I begin my review, a statutory warning to all my patriotic Indian brothers and sisters... this is India-bashing, large scale. If you are the sort of person who gets all worked up when any aspect of India is criticised, this book is not for you.

That said, Arvind Adiga bashes India where it has to be bashed. No honest reader will be able to dispute that the picture of India he paints is a false one. You will find the majority of Indians embarassedly changing the topic when Bihar (the state...more Before I begin my review, a statutory warning to all my patriotic Indian brothers and sisters... this is India-bashing, large scale. If you are the sort of person who gets all worked up when any aspect of India is criticised, this book is not for you.

That said, Arvind Adiga bashes India where it has to be bashed. No honest reader will be able to dispute that the picture of India he paints is a false one. You will find the majority of Indians embarassedly changing the topic when Bihar (the state Adiga names "Darkness") enters the conversation. Most of the things he mentions are not only possible, but probable and even likely. You only have to read any Indian newspaper over the period of a week to know it.

But I believe the author fails in the creation of Munna alias Balram Halwai, the protagonist, because his voice is totally out of character with the person. It is the supercilious voice of a Westernised Indian, detached from his home country by education and station in life that comes through. The street smart Munna who murdered his employer and set up his business in Bangalore will talk in an entirely different way (for example, he will never say "five hundred thousand rupees" - he'll say "five lakhs"). Here, the character just becomes a mouthpiece for the author.

Secondly, Adiga goes overboard in criticising India, so that some of his examples become rather extreme (the immediate one that comes to mind is the schoolteacher boozing and sleeping in the classroom). In some other cases, they are downright silly (Balram buys a dosa and throws out all the potatoes before giving to Mukesh, whereas he could have bought a dosa easily without the potatoes: these are two varieties). It also confirms the opinion I formed of Adiga from his bio that he is that type of Indian Lord Macaulay wanted to create: Indian only by birth but English in spirit.

Lastly, the story failed to hold my interest. Take out all the social criticism and it is nothing but a hollow shell. And the gimmicks, like framing it as a letter to the Chinese premier, are trite to the point of being nauseating.

The only thing that forced me to give two stars to this work is some of the pithy statements Adiga makes about Indian society. Especially the ones about how caste-ridden India was a zoo, with all animals in separate cages when the British let them all out, so now only the ones with the big bellies and the ones with the small bellies are left; about automobile horns during a traffic jam joining together to form a single wail like a lost calf wailing for its mother; and the one about how the major diseases India faces are cholera, typhoid and election fever (though I would also include cricket).
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Nandakishore Varma Dileep,

I refer you back to the first paragraph of my review.

"That said, Arvind Adiga bashes India where it has to be bashed. No honest reader will be...more
Apr 15, 2013 03:44am

Dileep MP Yes.. I do get your point.. As a work of literature he may not deserve a booker. Yes, he dosent use too many italicized hindi words. The kind you find...more
Apr 16, 2013 06:05am

Dec 11, 2008 Jwala rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well the stories of murderers and psychopaths are generally like cakes to most of us(and i am no exception). I either love such protagonists or hate them whole-heartedly. Coming to Balaram, the situation is different. I had never felt anything for him even after reading 300 pages. I didn’t even hate him and I was completely indifferent towards him mainly because I felt that his character is artificial and inconsistent.
Every time I read a cynical work or a satire I feel that I have become a bit...more

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Jul 16, 2009 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Balram Halwai grew up in the Darkness -- the immense swath of rural India where the poor vastly outnumber the rich and where the right of the rich to oppress the poor is rarely questioned.

By dint of his intelligence and ambition, he becomes the No. 2 driver to a local landlord nicknamed The Stork, and when he discovers the No. 1 driver has been hiding a secret, is able to displace him and eventually move to Delhi with the landlord's Westernized son, Mr. Ashok, and his modern wife, Pinky Madam.

Qu...more Balram Halwai grew up in the Darkness -- the immense swath of rural India where the poor vastly outnumber the rich and where the right of the rich to oppress the poor is rarely questioned.

By dint of his intelligence and ambition, he becomes the No. 2 driver to a local landlord nicknamed The Stork, and when he discovers the No. 1 driver has been hiding a secret, is able to displace him and eventually move to Delhi with the landlord's Westernized son, Mr. Ashok, and his modern wife, Pinky Madam.

Quite early in this debut novel, Balram -- writing a long letter to Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, who is about to visit India -- confesses that he has murdered Mr. Ashok, a crime that enabled him to move to Bangalore and set himself up as an entrepreneur.

The flashback journey he relates in his letter describes how he came to that point, and in the process, it lays out a sardonic, seriocomic saga of the plight of India's poor. At one point, Balram tries to explain why the poor don't rise up to overwhelm their masters, and the best metaphor he can come up with is the chicken market in old Delhi, where live roosters sit powerless in cages beneath the carcasses of their freshly slaughtered brothers. He writes:

"Every day, on the roads of Delhi, some chauffeur is driving an empty car with a black suitcase sitting on the backseat. Inside that suitcase is a million, two million rupees; more money than that chauffeur will see in his lifetime. If he took the money he could go to America, Australia, anywhere, and start a new life. He could go inside the five-star hotels he has dreamed about all his life and only seen from the outside. He could take his family to Goa, to England. Yet he takes that black suitcase where his master wants. He puts it down where he is meant to, and never touches a rupee. Why?

"Because Indians are the world's most honest people, like the prime minister's booklet will inform you? No. It's because 99.9 percent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys in the poultry market."

This novel won the Booker Prize this year, sparked outrage among many in India, but more than anything else, it tells an entertaining tale with the strong, distinctive voice of a man whose soul has had to move from servitude to independence, and who, despite his horrific deed, finds the freedom to live by his own standard of decency.(less)

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May 22, 2008 Rupert rated it 5 of 5 stars

Best contemporary novel I've read this year. Antidote for the pastel lyricism of most mainstream novels coming out of India and a wonderful social satire with savage bit. Kind of like Terry Southern's best work if he hadn't been all weeded up and goofy.
An image from it that sticks with me is how Ghandi's image gets appropriated by the current Indian bureaucracy. Whenever the narrator encounters the hanging Ghandi portrait he sees it as a symbol of "bribes work here, corruption at work". Perhap...more

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Mar 29, 2008 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who enjoyed Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" and Pears' "The Portrait"

A stunning first person narrative about a self-proclaimed murderer and entrepreneur. Balram Halwai, the complex narrator of the book, describes, in an obsessive, single-focued, unapologetic letter, his journey out of poverty from the Indian Darkness. It is a story about ambition, corruption, and power -- an amazing story about how one person in a country of servitude escapes his own station to become a man. Is he a visionary? Is he an iconoclast? Is he an amoral monster? The reader goes on a ver...more

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Mar 13, 2010 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was travelling one evening by train from Yeovil Junction in Somerset to Woking in Surrey and noticed that one of the passengers, a woman with long beautiful curly hair, was buried in 'The White Tiger'. On English trains you have a corridor opposite the toilets, also used for storing bicyles on the journey, where there are also two or three collapsible and uncomfortable seats. It is rather noisy but this was where the girl with curly hair was sitting and for the two hours of the journey she bar...more

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Apr 09, 2009 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: india, novels

The perfect companion piece to Slumdog Millionaire, and if you didn't like that movie, you won't like this book for the same reasons. It's a no-nonsense bulldozing mordant splenetic jackhammer of a story written as a tough slangy 300 page fast-reading monologue. It's a novel of information, not art. It tells you all about modern India with a traditional rags-to-riches fable. Our hero murders his employer unapologetically, and that's how he gets his riches. This is not rocket science. This is sma...more The perfect companion piece to Slumdog Millionaire, and if you didn't like that movie, you won't like this book for the same reasons. It's a no-nonsense bulldozing mordant splenetic jackhammer of a story written as a tough slangy 300 page fast-reading monologue. It's a novel of information, not art. It tells you all about modern India with a traditional rags-to-riches fable. Our hero murders his employer unapologetically, and that's how he gets his riches. This is not rocket science. This is smashing a guy over the head with a broken bottle of Johnny Walker.
But 90% of the book is not really the story, it's an anguished howl of rage about a distance of eighteen inches. In India, and indeed in other places too, the Rich and the Poor inhabit different universes. But the rich hire some of the poor as servants. This novel is the story of a servant who was a driver. In the car, the driver is separated from his employer (the word used here is Master) by the short distance of 18 inches. But economically, psychologically, medically, it's really 400 light years, as we know. And yet, every day, there they are, cheek by jowl, 18 inches apart, the one regarding the other with irritated amusement or annoyance or contempt, depending on mood, and being reciprocated with fawning fear and even awe. Our hero Balram is the rare beast (white tiger) who does not succumb to this fear and awe. But it's a struggle, and I was glad to be along for the ride.

In the London Review of Books, Sanjay Subrahmanyam almost trashes The White Tiger. His main beef is the language of the novel :

"What of Balram Halwai? What does he sound like? Despite the odd namaste, daal, paan and ghat, his vocabulary is not sprinkled with North Indian vernacular terms. His sentences are mostly short and crudely constructed, apparently a reflection of the fact that we’re dealing with a member of the ‘subaltern’ classes. He doesn’t engage in Rushdian word-play. But he does use a series of expressions that simply don’t add up. He describes his office as a ‘hole in the wall’. He refers to ‘kissing some god’s arse’, an idiomatic expression that doesn’t exist in any North Indian language. ‘Half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas’ and the Chinese prime minister is advised never to ‘let that blasphemous idea into your yellow skull’. On another matter, he sneers: ‘They’re so yesterday.’ A clever little phrase appears: ‘A statutory warning – as they say on cigarette packs – before we begin.’ Dogs are referred to as ‘mutts’. Yet whose vocabulary and whose expressions are these? On page after page, one is brought up short by the jangling dissonance of the language and the falsity of the expressions. This is a posh English-educated voice trying to talk dirty, without being able to pull it off. This is not Salinger speaking as Holden Caulfield, or Joyce speaking as Molly Bloom. It is certainly not Ralph Ellison or James Baldwin, whom Adiga has claimed as his models in speaking for the underdog. What we are dealing with is someone with no sense of the texture of Indian vernaculars, yet claiming to have produced a realistic text."

and then devastatingly:

"The paradox is that for many of this novel’s readers, this lack of verisimilitude will not matter because for them India is and will remain an exotic place. This book adds another brick to the patronising edifice it wants to tear down."

He's right, it didn't matter to me that a guy who doesn't speak English is represented as using hundreds of idiomatic English phrases. But for me that problem is the same as the one posed by the question "how can this first person narrator remember conversations in detail which happened years ago and anyway, who the hell is she talking to?" - i.e. it's a device, we suspend our disbelief, we do it all the time : every time we watch a movie we could be asking ourselves (but don't) "whose point of view is this all from?". Who gathered all those documents together to form the text known as the novel "Dracula"? Well, no one, because Bram Stoker made it all up. How could Clarissa have found the time to write all those long, long letters in "Clarissa"? And so on. (note : Subrahmanyam was the only really dissident voice I found regarding The White Tiger so I thought his argument was worth considering.)

Postscript

The White Tiger is the 9th Booker Prize Winner I've read and redresses the balance between the Splendid (this one, Midnight's Children, Remains of the Day and Sacred Hunger) and the What Were They Thinking (Life & Times of Michael K, Hotel Du Lac, Possession, Life of Pi and especially, remarkably, horrendously, Vernon God Little).(less)

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Feb 15, 2009 Boof rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Boof by: Christmas present

Shelves: read-in-2009, india, my-most-amazing-books

I have just this minute finished this book and I can already tell that it will be one of those books that I will think about often. It's not a book whose plot I can easily explain, or a book that I can easily fit into a particular genre on my shelves, but my God did it pack a powerful punch. I have hardly been able to put it down between sittings.

The books is narrated via a letter from Balram Halwai, a slum-dweller-turned-driver-turned-murderer-turned-entrepreneur, to the Chinese President befor...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Blair rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, booker-prize, read-on-kindle

Told in the form of a lengthy letter relating the protagonist's childhood, career, and - ultimately - his crimes, this is a dark, unsettling novel that also acts as an unflattering portrait of modern-day India. Our unreliable narrator and anti-hero is Balram Halwai, a dubious 'entrepreneur' residing in Bangalore. For reasons never really explained, he is writing a confessional document, addressed to a Chinese politician, telling the story of his life. Over the course of seven nights he describes...more Told in the form of a lengthy letter relating the protagonist's childhood, career, and - ultimately - his crimes, this is a dark, unsettling novel that also acts as an unflattering portrait of modern-day India. Our unreliable narrator and anti-hero is Balram Halwai, a dubious 'entrepreneur' residing in Bangalore. For reasons never really explained, he is writing a confessional document, addressed to a Chinese politician, telling the story of his life. Over the course of seven nights he describes his poor upbringing, how he came to be employed as a driver to his landlord's son, his subsequent escape from the 'Darkness' of his youth to Delhi, and the final, terrible action culminating in his escape to Bangalore, and his freedom from servitude.

The White Tiger is a page-turner - it only took me about a day to finish it. It reminded me a little of a recent read, A Kind of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth; also a disturbing tale with a dishonest and emotionally corrupt narrator. When writing my review of that book, I mentioned that I felt Ashworth revealed the truth of her protagonist's nature too early in the story, and Adiga does the same thing here, giving away the climatic event of Balram's life within the first couple of chapters. Unfortunately, the narrative that comes after this makes no effort to draw you into Balram's world or encourage sympathy for his actions (nor whatever led him to them). This is in stark contrast with Ashworth's book, in which you can't help but feel sorry for the delusional, lonely Annie. Balram is almost definitely lonely, and may well be delusional too, but there's no attempt to humanise him. As you probably know, since I mention it every couple of reviews or so, I love unreliable narrators - even more so if they're isolated from society and lacking in ordinary morals - but Balram's tale is too bleak and, in the end, too pointless to be genuinely memorable.

The novel is effective in its unflinching portrayal of India - the poverty of Balram's childhood village, the corruption that infects political systems in both the country and the city, the contempt masters have for their servants, the chaos of the city streets and how this clashes (in what appears to be an almost mocking fashion) with the intrusion of American tourists and glossy new corporate buildings. Whether accurate or not, it's certainly attention-grabbing and thought-provoking. There's also an inevitable undercurrent of dark, sly humour which adds to the compelling feel of the narrative.

There are so many interesting ideas in this book, and the premise is, or at least could have been, fascinating. However, for me, the whole was a disappointment. It's perhaps most notable for its commentary on India and its depiction of the relationship between master and servant, but the device of Balram's confession falls somewhat flat, mainly due to the characterisation. Balram is, in a sense, the only character - the views we get of the others are very, very limited - so it's vital that the reader engages with him, yet this is almost impossible. Worth reading, if only because it's a quick read, but not a book I can say I truly enjoyed.(less)

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Dec 09, 2009 Whitaker rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Whitaker by: Brad Simkulet

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, india, 2009-read

I don't know how many people on Goodreads have live-in servants. For those living in the West, I suspect very few if any. That peculiar institution has died out there, and most would now find it intrusive and demeaning. The institution is, however, quite alive and well in many parts of Asia where maids--usually from the Philippines, Sri Lanka or Indonesia--form part of the family nucleus. I do say "family nucleus" because a lucky or successful maid will insinuate herself into the family such tha...more I don't know how many people on Goodreads have live-in servants. For those living in the West, I suspect very few if any. That peculiar institution has died out there, and most would now find it intrusive and demeaning. The institution is, however, quite alive and well in many parts of Asia where maids--usually from the Philippines, Sri Lanka or Indonesia--form part of the family nucleus. I do say "family nucleus" because a lucky or successful maid will insinuate herself into the family such that she becomes indispensible to her employers. Such employers will often say that XYZ is "like family". The truth, however, is that she is like family only so long as she knows her place. Her lot is to be a part of the family, but always apart from it.

In the past, when the West had its own master and servant classes, the paradoxes of that relationship were examined in the novel. Think of Wodehouse and the Jeeves stories and Robin Maugham's The Servant to name but two. To that list, I guess we can add The White Tiger, for--to me--the major strength of this novel was the way it captured that peculiar dynamic between master and servant: a strange and noxious mix of love and loathing, fear and dependence. In a marriage, a psychologist would call it a co-dependent relationship, and counsel both parties to stop.

While it might be too reductionist to regard this novel as a simple story of servant abuse, that was where the novel rang the most true to me: in its depiction of that dynamic of co-dependence that corrupts and corrodes both master and servant. As much as I liked it, however, I was left in the end with an uneasy feeling of exploitation. Maybe I'm reading too much into this novel, but doesn't that master-servant relationship also speak of the current co-dependence between the West as employer and the East as workshop/call centre employee? And does not the fear of the servant slitting the master's throat ultimately pander to the notion that the "brown and yellow people" will rise up to overtake the West? And does it not then simultaneously also assuage that fear by belittling the barbaric state of Indian politics and commerce? Or maybe I'm just an unremdeemable cynic.

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The Telegraph: "Gridlocked in corruption, greed, inhumanity and absolute inequality--of class, caste, wealth, religion--this India is unredemptive. What Adiga lifts the lid on is also inexorably true: not a single detail in this novel rings false or feels confected. The White Tiger is an excoriating piece of work, stripping away the veneer of 'India Rising'. That it also manages to be suffused with mordant wit, modulating to clear-eyed pathos, means Adiga is going places as a writer."

The Complete Review: "There are some good ideas here, and the writing (bit by bit, at least) isn't bad, but the whole is disappointing. "

The Times: "In The White Tiger Adiga's character is India itself and this author does not creep. His language is brisk, his methods brutal, his intention to flip the subcontinent over and shine his spotlight on itsunderbelly, revealing the corruption and degradation that lie beneath the economic miracle. There is scope here for real depth. ... But the moment does not come and we are left with the glare of Adiga's lighting and his tigerish rage in scene after savage and unsustaining scene."

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May 30, 2008 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the kind of book that many people try to write and few succeed at. The White Tiger is an awesome book and anyone who is even remotely interested in India will enjoy it. The author is a former Time magazine writer and the first great thing he accomplishes is painting an effortless picture of modern India, from its poorest slums to the wealthier areas where more Westernized Indians make a living doing computer and telephone work for American companies (and then go spend their salaries at s...more

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Apr 06, 2009 Brad rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize

Aravind Adiga claims Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as the forebear of his Booker Prize Winning novel The White Tiger. I wish I could speak to that relationship (I really must get around to reading Ellison), but there was another relationship I found that was important to me: Balram Halwai (aka "The White Tiger," aka "Munna," aka "Country-Mouse," aka Ashok Sharma) and Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov.

Balram is a sort of anti-Raskolnikov.

Their story is much the same but there is one key difference: Balra...more Aravind Adiga claims Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as the forebear of his Booker Prize Winning novel The White Tiger. I wish I could speak to that relationship (I really must get around to reading Ellison), but there was another relationship I found that was important to me: Balram Halwai (aka "The White Tiger," aka "Munna," aka "Country-Mouse," aka Ashok Sharma) and Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov.

Balram is a sort of anti-Raskolnikov.

Their story is much the same but there is one key difference: Balram doesn't let "foolish" guilt overwhelm him. The fiery Indian man has a strength of spirit that the paranoid Russian lacks, and it makes him likable in spite of his actions.

But then, Raskolnikov's weakness always made me cringe. His act of murder was nasty, yes, but it wasn't without justification, and once he committed the murder I wanted him to live up to the ideals he used to justify his act. He failed himself and paid the price, and he disappointed me in the bargain.

Balram doesn't fall prey to the same weakness (although it is interesting to note that the novel is epistolary, unfolding in a series of letters over seven nights, so perhaps there is an underlying weakness that still catches him out beyond the confines of the novel), and he uses the murder and the money he steals to better his life and finally feel like "a man" in a world where caste enslaves more than half of its starving population.

If Raskolnikov's crimes were somewhat justified, Balram's are much more so, but they also have greater consequences. Balram's crimes bleed into areas that Raskolnikov's don't. Balram's attack with the jagged neck of a Johnny Walker Black bottle doesn't just kill his "master," it effectively kills his entire family.

The wonder of Adiga's book, however, is that it leaves us, or at least it left me, entirely okay with Balram's actions.

The man did what he had to do. He did what the rich do everyday. And he became one of them. He rose up. He made it.

And that's the American Dream isn't it? The American dream in Bangalor. Praise be to free enterprise.(less)

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Jan 02, 2009 Ewurama rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The White Tiger is a lightning-fast read (and winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction), which I easily finished in under a week. The reader knows up front that the main character and narrator, Balram Halwai, went from being a poor village boy to becoming a successful entrepreneur and also, somewhere in the middle of it all, a murderer—but is left to discover the how and why over the course of the book.

Balram uses the metaphor of the rooster coop to explain Indian society. Everybody is cr...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Crystal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An interesting read - and a perspective on India I'm glad to have, really. Addressing the caste system, corruption, greed, money, all the despotic things humans have created.

Makes you angry, but the voice of the protagonist is ironic enough that you can't help but chuckle outloud.

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Mar 14, 2010 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: LFPC

Shelves: read-only-coz-of-gr

The central character and narrator of this novel -- Balram, the "White Tiger" -- is like an Indian Raskolnikov without the guilt. Unlike Dostoevsky's prototypical anti-hero, however, Balram's crime is founded on a morality and world view we can actually root for (well, maybe that's my own morality and world view showing through. Still.)

This novel is at once heart-wrenching, disgust-provoking and deeply satirical (also very, very funny). It seethes with anger and conveys well -- primarily throug...more The central character and narrator of this novel -- Balram, the "White Tiger" -- is like an Indian Raskolnikov without the guilt. Unlike Dostoevsky's prototypical anti-hero, however, Balram's crime is founded on a morality and world view we can actually root for (well, maybe that's my own morality and world view showing through. Still.)

This novel is at once heart-wrenching, disgust-provoking and deeply satirical (also very, very funny). It seethes with anger and conveys well -- primarily through a scathing irony -- the injustice that has so rightfully led to the anger in a way that every slave narrative should. For this is how I would characterize it: this is a book about the economic and social structures that enslave huge segments of the world's population and that demand, may even require, nothing short of human sacrifice to redress.

Adiga's India rivals Rohinton Mistry's in A Fine Balance in terms of the horrific descriptions of the living conditions of the impoverished in India, but the character arc is in the opposite direction. Also, Adiga goes further in making his book entirely about what it actually takes for a rooster to escape the coop, or the tiger to escape the cage (I enjoyed the humans-as-beasts symbolism, which is powerful and prevalent, used to illustrate the effects of entrapment and servitude from a number of perspectives). Where A Fine Balance achieved its thematic goal by leaving the reader feeling oppressed and hopeless, The White Tiger achieves a very similar goal by leaving us enraged and discomfited. There is more hope here, I think, but it is a bleak sense of optimism founded upon a reality so gritty, and a protagonist so flawed, that it might better be described as numbed collusion. Progress is inevitable, but so is the corruption that lies at the heart of it. In A Fine Balance, we were worn down and broken by the injustice portrayed; here we are co-opted and made complicit in it.

The White Tiger has an immediacy and sense of modernity that A Fine Balance lacks, although the latter precedes it by just 15 years. The high-tech entrepreneurialism upon which Balram's success is founded is also India's and marks the difference between the stage of industrialization at the heart of each novel. AWT's contemporary globalism is reinforced through the highly effective framing device of Balram's seven-day (are we meant to draw a biblical parallel?) letter to the visiting Chinese Premier, which provides an up-to-the-minute context for the politics and economics.

At the risk of taking the comparison too far, I was able to put A Fine Balance down and retain some sense of distance from its sadness, desperation and filth -- it was describing, after all, caste-on-caste subjugation. Shameful as this is to admit, I felt one step removed. It remained a story about a place I've never been, and one that didn't seem to influence my life. As I sit here typing a book review to be distributed over the Internet on my Dell computer using Microsoft software, for which I've occasionally needed to call a 1-800 number for service (all of these companies, among others, are identified by name in AWT), that distance has evaporated along with my sense of comfort and complacency.

Ashiga, educated at Columbia and Oxford and living now in Mumbai according to the jacket blurb, offers a controlled but relentless satire that lets no one off the hook: not any of his characters, nor any of his readers no matter what part of the globe you call home.

An extraordinary read, highly recommended.(less)

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Oct 29, 2009 Map rated it 4 of 5 stars

A darkly realistic view of modern India narrated by a moral, philosophical, yet coldly pragmatic man. I see Balram, the protagonist and narrator, as more of a metaphor; the murder he commits is one of necessity that propels change for the slice of India he represents. While he becomes more like those whom he kills, he still retains a level of decency that offers hope for change.

Everyone talks about the 21st century being the rise of India and China. But neither of those nations can truly take t...more

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Dec 17, 2008 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite section of this gripping little book is when our young hero is fleeing from a pimp and ends up in a well-known book market in the old part of the city. He compares the intellectual arousal to that of a brothel--from which he has just fled--and explains how the "brain hums" when one is around books, especially a lot of books. This feeling is kin to anyone who finds him/herself magnetically drawn into second-hand bookstores or even the big black and green giants like Borders or Barnes...more My favorite section of this gripping little book is when our young hero is fleeing from a pimp and ends up in a well-known book market in the old part of the city. He compares the intellectual arousal to that of a brothel--from which he has just fled--and explains how the "brain hums" when one is around books, especially a lot of books. This feeling is kin to anyone who finds him/herself magnetically drawn into second-hand bookstores or even the big black and green giants like Borders or Barnes & Noble. A daze settles on the mind, a kind of awestruck trance. Books appear and reappear in this story, and the protagonist, a young man from a slum of a village who makes good as a personal chauffer for corrupt and nasty businessman in Delhi, senses that somehow books should be in his life, but he doesn't read, and his only literary reference are two four Muslim poets, of whose names he can remember only three.
The book harps on the same point repeatedly: The India of Darkness and the India of Light. The slum, the plumbing that rivals ancient rome, the stench, the poverty, that is the Darkness. The Light shines its beams on tech companies, skyscrapers, masters with personal chauffers and the rest of the new India everyone has been praising for quite some time now. The NYTimes review pigeonholed this book as nothing more than literary "social commentary." But I see it as a stern rebuke to those ever-ready individuals who applaud emerging India, prophesying its superpower future and undeniable place in the forefront of global affairs. What we see here is a deeply split society, a gaping void between the rich and the poor, hostility towards Indian Muslims, and a constant kind of stink. Like Dickens, the India of "White Tiger" is full of dirt and grime. It smells.
The story is written in a letter to the Premier of China, who the hero has heard is visiting India in a few days. Dismissed as a gimmick or device by critics, this setup deserves more attention. It is of no small coincidence that a book about the lie that is modern India should have its story directed at a country that lives a similar lie. This book is a thinly vieled jab at "Chindia," the idea that somehow these deeply flawed countries will splendidly rule the world.
Another one of the book's merits is its similarities with other first-person narratives of note. I felt the influence of the frustrated and insightful Holden Caufield and the wily but senstive Huck at play constantly, which may have been in the minds of those who gave the book its presitigious prize and placed it, rightfully in my opinion, in the company of other tales that won't leave us alone.(less)

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Apr 12, 2009 Kohl Gill rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Folks looking for a light read about modern India

Recommended to Kohl by: Allison Coleman, Augustin Maria

The scenes of Delhi, especially of poverty and corruption in Delhi, got me a lot more nostalgic than I had expected. The narrator lives in his own head, so grand pronouncements run through the text; I've quoted a few here from the beginning of the book. I agree with various reviews I've read that Adiga is a bit free with this character trait, and that it distracts quite a bit as unrealistic in the context of the novel. But it still hangs together nicely.

Of course, I've never grown up poor in the...more The scenes of Delhi, especially of poverty and corruption in Delhi, got me a lot more nostalgic than I had expected. The narrator lives in his own head, so grand pronouncements run through the text; I've quoted a few here from the beginning of the book. I agree with various reviews I've read that Adiga is a bit free with this character trait, and that it distracts quite a bit as unrealistic in the context of the novel. But it still hangs together nicely.

Of course, I've never grown up poor in the Darkness, so what do I know?

"The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen."

"Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English."

"Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like the one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep--all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with."

"Apparently, sir you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, ‘’does’’ have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs—’’we’’ entrepreneurs—have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now."(less)

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Sep 06, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize-longlist

Another fine entry on the Booker Prize longlist for 2008, and I must say, this is the first year that I've been reading the longlist where I've really enjoyed every book I've read. With only three more of these books to go I'm simply amazed at how well the judges chose this year. What's even more amazing is that White Tiger is Adiga's first novel. He will definitely be on my list of authors to watch in the future.

At some point the main character Balram Halwai recounts a story about the Buddha i...more

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Oct 16, 2008 Jeffrey rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who like to learn about the world

Shelves: literature, read-in-2008

A really fascinating look at the underbelly of Indian culture from the viewpoint of a driver of a rich landlord -- industrialist in India. The White Tiger, a poor boy who without any formal education becomes a wealthy man recounts his path to wealth in a series of letters to the Chinese Premier who is visiting India. (Personally this style fo the story made little sense but the story told was fresh and interesting and informative). Update -- this novel just won the Man-Booker Prize as the best n...more

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Nov 12, 2008 Spudsie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Man Booker readers

Ehhhh...it was okay.

Well, it was probably better than okay. Since it won the Man Booker prize my expectations were pretty high. And while the story kept my attention, I wasn't completely "sold" on some of the decisions and actions of the main character. They didn't ring true.

I really enjoyed the letter-style of the book. I certainly don't regret spending the time reading it.

I suppose I just expected something more.

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Sep 27, 2010 indri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asia-land

#2010-80#

Politik suap. Manipulasi pajak. Pemilihan umum yang diatur. Persekongkolan negara. Tuan tanah yang merajalela. Rakyat miskin bertambah miskin. Dan tidak ada yang peduli pada mereka. Semua yang didengar seorang sopir dari balik kemudi majikannya.

Untuk siapa pembangunan? Untuk orang kaya. Orang-orang yang berbisnis di negara dan menolak membayar pajak, padahal itu untuk kesejahteraan orang miskin. Mereka menutup mata terhadap keadaan sekeliling, terpenjara dalam zona nyaman ber-AC, dalam...more #2010-80#

Politik suap. Manipulasi pajak. Pemilihan umum yang diatur. Persekongkolan negara. Tuan tanah yang merajalela. Rakyat miskin bertambah miskin. Dan tidak ada yang peduli pada mereka. Semua yang didengar seorang sopir dari balik kemudi majikannya.

Untuk siapa pembangunan? Untuk orang kaya. Orang-orang yang berbisnis di negara dan menolak membayar pajak, padahal itu untuk kesejahteraan orang miskin. Mereka menutup mata terhadap keadaan sekeliling, terpenjara dalam zona nyaman ber-AC, dalam sisi Gurgaon yang mewah di New Delhi, dan tahukah akan kemiskinan dan kemelaratan di Old Delhi?

Siapa yang diharapkan jujur? Pelayan pribadi, orang yang terikat hidupnya dengan si majikan tentunya. Orang yang dengan enak bisa diteriaki pencuri kalau ada apa-apa, tapi dilupakan jasanya apabila sudah berpayah-payah.

Jangan mengetes sopirmu dengan koin satu atau dua rupee-- dia mungkin akan mencurinya. Tapi tinggalkan satu juta dolar di hadapan seorang pembantu dan dia takkan menyentuh satu penny pun. Coba saja : tinggalkan tas hitam berisi satu juta dollar dalam taksi Mumbai. Si sopir akan menelepon polisi dan mengembalikannya sebelum hari berlalu. Saya jamin. (Apakah polisi akan mengembalikannya pada Anda atau tidak itu lain cerita, Sir!) h. 187

Potret negara berkembangkah ini? Masih banyak kelicikan dan kekejaman di mana-mana. Di mana ada jurang dalam antara si kaya dan si miskin. Pembangunan yang menggerogoti kaum Kegelapan, yang hanya bisa berdiri sebagai penopang, diinjak dan dibebani, sementara tuan-tuan mereka menaiki dengan anggun dan terhormat, dan berkata, 'Pembangunan untuk kita semua!'. Huh, jargon politik! Hanya untuk mengejar supaya si tuan dapat melanjutkan kekuasaannya.

Pelayan paling baik adalah yang menuruti majikan. Mereka dididik untuk itu. Bahkan untuk hal paling bodoh sekalipun. Seorang supir yang mengakui kesalahan majikannya yang menabrak anak kecil dalam keadaan mabuk.

Apa keluarga si sopir memprotes? Sama sekali tidak. Mereka bahkan malah akan menyombongkan hal ini. Putra mereka Balram mengambil alih tanggung jawab, ditahan di Penjara Tihar demi majikannya. Dia setia seperti anjing. Dia pembantu yang sempurna.
Para hakim? Mereka pasti tahu pengakuan itu dibuat dengan paksaan, kan? Tapi mereka juga bagian dari penipuan ini. Mereka menerima suap, lalu tidak mengacuhkan kerancuan apa pun dalan kasus ini. Dan, hidup terus berlanjut. h. 181

Siapa yang binatang sebenarnya? Yah, manusia memang makhkuk yang paling kejam. Yang tega memakan, menghisap, menggigit kawanannya sendiri. Untuk kekayaan dan kekuasaan. Virus akal budi dan peri kemanusiaan hanya menggerogoti segelintir orang.(less)

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Jan 16, 2009 Janekendrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

An engaging,original style can often portray harsh realities realistically and convincingly. After reading this brilliant book, I now know that I will never travel to India

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Aug 16, 2011 Lyndz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

The book White Tiger first caught my eye because it won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, I sequentially noticed it on the NY times bestseller list a little while later. I decided to read this book for a couple different reasons. First reason, it was available for immediate check out at my library. Second reason, I was hoping for another book similar to Life of Pi which won the same prize in 2002 and also had an Indian theme.

I went into this book knowing near to nothing about it other than...more

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May 31, 2011 Fahad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

النمر الأبيض

يأخذنا بطل هذه الرواية، أو لنقل نمرها الأبيض في رحلته من الظلام إلى النور، أو بالعكس، هذا على الأقل ما سنفكر به حالما ننتهي من الرواية، حيث ستبدو لنا الهند حينها وكأنها إحدى تلك الصور الفضائية التي تلتقط لبلد يزور نور الصباح شرقه فيما لازال غربه لامعا ً بأنوار الليل، ولكن الهند ستكون في هذه الصورة مبقعة، ليست إلا ظلام دامس تخترقه بقع ضوء لامعة صغيرة.

بالرام حلوي الذي سماه معلمه في المدرسة بهذا الاسم لأن لا أحد في المنزل كان لديه الوقت لتسميته، أو مونا أي ولد كما كانوا ينادونه منذ ولاد...more النمر الأبيض

يأخذنا بطل هذه الرواية، أو لنقل نمرها الأبيض في رحلته من الظلام إلى النور، أو بالعكس، هذا على الأقل ما سنفكر به حالما ننتهي من الرواية، حيث ستبدو لنا الهند حينها وكأنها إحدى تلك الصور الفضائية التي تلتقط لبلد يزور نور الصباح شرقه فيما لازال غربه لامعا ً بأنوار الليل، ولكن الهند ستكون في هذه الصورة مبقعة، ليست إلا ظلام دامس تخترقه بقع ضوء لامعة صغيرة.

بالرام حلوي الذي سماه معلمه في المدرسة بهذا الاسم لأن لا أحد في المنزل كان لديه الوقت لتسميته، أو مونا أي ولد كما كانوا ينادونه منذ ولادته، لأنه لا وقت كما قلت، أو النمر الأبيض كما أراد لنفسه، لأن النمر الأبيض حيوان نادر، لا يظهر إلا مرة في الجيل.

الخادم، القاتل، رجل الأعمال ثم الفيلسوف، الذي يقرر حالما يسمع أن رئيس الوزراء الصيني (وين جياباو) سيزور بنغالور أن يشاركه فلسفته، أن يشرح له ما هي الهند، فلذا يكتب له خطابات طويلة يوزعها على ليال ً متعددة، يحكي فيها قصته هو، كرمز لبنغالور، المدينة الهندية التي تتركز فيها صناعة البرمجيات، والتي تعتبر أهم مدينة هندية حاليا ً، ومثال للوعد الهندي في التقدم ومنافسة الصين.

بهذه الفكرة الذكية يضعنا (آرافيند أديغا) في مواجهات متعددة، الهند مقارنة بالصين، الديموقراطية هنا والشمولية هناك، الأغنياء والفقراء، السادة والعبيد، يجعلنا نراقب كيف تفسد المدينة الهندية قاصديها، كيف تفسد السيد آشوك العائد من أمريكا بمثاليات وأفكار لا يمكن أن تعيش في الهند، كيف ينحدر، يفقد زوجته، يفقد أخلاقه ومثله وينتهي مقتولا ً، ثم كيف تفسد في الوقت ذاته خادمه المخلص بالرام، الذي جاء من الهند المظلمة إلى ما نظن أنها هند المتنورة، ولكن أديغا يسلب منا هذه الظنون عندما نرى كيف تظلم روح البطل، كيف ينحل مع الوقت حتى يصبح قاتلا ً، هاربا ً، ورجل أعمال في بنغالور، يساهم في حلم التقدم الهندي، هذا الحلم الذي صار في موضع تساؤل، ما دام أن رجاله من عينة النمر الأبيض.

الرواية حازت على جائزة المان بوكر لعام 2008 م، ومؤلفها (آرافيند أديغا) ولد في مدراس سنة 1974 م، ولكنه نشأ في أستراليا – فلذا هو من المحظوظين -، درس في جامعتي كولومبيا وأكسفورد، ثم عمل مراسلا ً لمجلة تايم في الهند.

لا أعلم كيف قرأ مواطنوه هذه الرواية، ولكني أظن أنهم لا يختلفون عنا كثيرا ً، فلذا لن يقبلوا هذا الذي جاءهم من الخارج ليعلمهم، وسحنته الهندية لن تفيده كثيرا ً.

النمر الأبيض

آرفيند أديغا

ترجمة: سهيل نجم

الطبعة الأولى 2010 م

311 صفحة(less)

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Dec 31, 2010 Sun rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookaweek2010

Balram Halwai is a poor "half-baked" boy from rural India and The White Tiger is the story of how he becomes a self-proclaimed entrepreneur. Written in the form of a letter to Chinese premier Wen Jia Bao, the story centers on Balram's time as a driver to a rich family in Delhi and documents his escape from lifelong servitude.

Aravind Adiga's debut novel is a rich and humorous indictment of modern Indian society, which juxtaposes widespread corruption and an ironic world-view with irreverent wit a...more

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Aug 18, 2009 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: leetle-boys, kind-of-depressing, crime-and-punishment

Postcolonial lite. I feel like this is what I'm supposed to be reading while I listen to MIA and rock last season's mirrored "ethnic chic" from Urban Outfitters. To show that, you know, I'm a citizen of the world, and a really hip westerner who gets the shifting forces of globalization.... did I feel a bit pandered to? I did feel a bit pandered to. Just a bit, now. Oh, this book was okay.

Fine, actually it was an entertaining and engaging rags-to-riches story about injustice and inequality in a c...more

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Mar 30, 2009 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, asia-india-middle-east

What a voice this one has...

Born in India and Oxford-educated, Adiga--as a reviewer states on the cover--"grew up angry," and much of White Tiger comes across as a scathing critique of life on both ends of the economic spectrum in India. Adiga manages this critique without the book coming across as one giant dump on India, though I understand why it caused the uproar it did. Still, I believe Adiga sees the myriad positives in India (he did choose to return to live there after getting a world-cla...more What a voice this one has...

Born in India and Oxford-educated, Adiga--as a reviewer states on the cover--"grew up angry," and much of White Tiger comes across as a scathing critique of life on both ends of the economic spectrum in India. Adiga manages this critique without the book coming across as one giant dump on India, though I understand why it caused the uproar it did. Still, I believe Adiga sees the myriad positives in India (he did choose to return to live there after getting a world-class education that easily could have led him to places like New York or London), and with this book shows that a country straddling two worlds doesn't really fit in either.

At first, I thought this book was going to focus on the juxtaposition between the India marketed to the rest of the world--the India of entrepreneurs, MIT wizards and a Bend-it-like-Beckham mesh of celebrations, colorful saris and awesome food--and the "real" India, which of course includes the above stereotypes but doesn't hide the poor and impoverished. I was wrong--the book doesn't flatter or glorify either; rather, corruption is an equal-opportunity employer in Adiga's word.

I don't think I've ever read anything written like White Tiger, and I do mean that as a compliment. I love the unconventional formatting, I love the narrator's asides, I love the convoluted relationships.... The narrator isn't exactly lovable, but he is endearing--I wanted him to do the right thing, I wanted the best for him, even while knowing that he's fighting low and dirty. That raises a great question: can it ever be so dog-eat-dog that you have to put yourself before everything and everyone, or should the Golden Rule apply under all circumstances? Interestingly, I just read Into Thin Air and had to consider the same question...

Immensely readable--and a quick read to boot--the book draws you in from page one and will have you reading through the night to finish it. Great for book clubs/discussion groups.

Very, very close to 5 stars. (less)

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Dec 30, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a dark, biting, unsubtle look at 21st Century India, stuck in the mire of a corrupt, cynical past, and debauching and slaughtering its way into a corrupt and cynical future, told by a working class fellow who, through ambition, intelligence, and a willingness to be utterly ruthless is clawing his way up the rungs of the Indian class ladder. It paints a bleak picture, offering little optimism for an India that will be any cleaner, fairer or more humane than the India it is replacing.

While...more

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Feb 02, 2009 Faizah Roslaini rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2009, current-issues, funny, politics, favorites

It's amazing how satisfying this little book is for me, literally speaking. I was discouraged at the beginning because frankly the letter-writing style did not appeal much to my taste as it gave the impression that the whole reading would be 'quiet' (like Robin put it in one of her reviews). However as the reading progressed I was so mesmerized in it that my distaste was entirely forgotten. The writer did a really good job telling a story.

Balram tells a tale of rotten, backstreet India whereby:...more

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21st Century Lite...: First Night to Fourth Morning	12	26	Oct 19, 2012 04:34pm
21st Century Lite...: Sixth Night to Conclusion	6	20	Oct 19, 2012 09:46am

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