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Apr 01, 2010

Jwala rated it:

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 More...

11 comments like (41 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2009

Mark rated it:

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, Pi More...

9 comments like (34 people liked it)

May 22, 2008

Rupert rated it:

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 w More...

0 comments like (18 people liked it)

Mar 29, 2008

Jeff rated it:

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...

4 comments like (19 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2010

Anthony rated it:

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...

3 comments like (17 people liked it)

Apr 09, 2009

Paul rated it:

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...

17 comments like (32 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2009

Boof rated it:

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 Pre More...

3 comments like (23 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2012

Blair rated it:

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...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 09, 2009

Whitaker rated it:

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 famil More...

5 comments like (16 people liked it)

May 30, 2008

Cynthia rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Apr 06, 2009

Brad rated it:

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 i More...

5 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2009

Ewurama rated it:

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. E More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2011

Nandakishore rated it:

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 Bi More...

12 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Crystal rated it:

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.

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 20, 2010

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it:

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 More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 29, 2009

Map rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2008

Joe rated it:

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 Border More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Apr 12, 2009

Kohl rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2008

Nancy rated it:

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 ab More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 16, 2008

Jeffrey rated it:

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 bes More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 12, 2008

Spudsie rated it:

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.

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2010

indri rated it:

#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 zo More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2009

Janekendrick rated it:

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

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2011

Lyndz_♥ rated it:

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 i More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 10, 2011

Sun rated it:

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 w More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2009

Jessica rated it:

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 More...

4 comments like (15 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2011

Katie rated it:

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 aft More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2008

Will rated it:

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.
More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2009

Faizah Roslaini rated it:

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 In More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2008

Nagesh rated it:

Surely, You must be Kidding Me!!!

Isn't this the same Literary critic body/group that brought forward timeless masterpieces like: (to name a few)

Vernon God Little
Life of Pi
The Blind Assassin
The God of Small Things
Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha
Midnight's Children

Let me accept, I have not much clue about the process behind the shortlisting of the 5 novels for each year's contention and then the final decision making process in selecting THE O More...

10 comments like (8 people liked it)