A Sharp-toothed Tiger

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


To begin with I thought I might be irritated by this book...the convention of the first person narrator using the device of writing letters to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao as a device for explaining what the nature of a servant's life in India is. But never mind that. Aravind Adiga has created a truly plausible character in Balram Halwai, village boy turned chauffeur to a newly-returned from America, soft, initially naive but essentially corrupt young businessman. There is wit; there is cruelty; there is desperation; there is cynicism; there is realism.

Fine feelings are doubtless a good thing but you won't survive for long if they alone guide your daily actions. The lowest of the low have only one way of keeping their heads above water which is, unfortunately, to behave as appallingly (almost) to others, both equals, superiors and inferiors, as they have behaved to you. Or might behave to you. Keep one step ahead, think big, don't get involved in wishy-washy compassion.

I am in no position to question whether this extremely dark (and extremely funny) view of India is accurate, but it reads convincingly. And the voice of our narrator is consistently the striving, angry but humorous one of the 'half-baked' man, withdrawn from school as a young boy so that he can earn money for the family. His ideas are based on what he sees of how the world works. His interpretations are unmediated by education or reading. His beliefs are hand-me-down, street talk shared with other chauffeurs, whom he cannily keeps at distance.

The White Tiger won the Booker Prize in 2008. I'm not surprised. It deserved to.



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