The White Tiger in Between the Lines

Oct 15, 2008 Chloe rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-list, fiction, south-asia, man-booker-nom

For whatever reason, India has always held a special fascination for me. From the first time that Kipling's descriptions of the richness and scope of the Grand Trunk Road in Kim first caught my young ear the thought of India has possessed a fairly good chunk of my imagination. I know that it's not rooted in fact so much as it is in vague imagery of the exotic culled from Hollywood cliches and Mother Theresa infomercials. These are colonialist visions of riotous colors from half-remembered dreams For whatever reason, India has always held a special fascination for me. From the first time that Kipling's descriptions of the richness and scope of the Grand Trunk Road in Kim first caught my young ear the thought of India has possessed a fairly good chunk of my imagination. I know that it's not rooted in fact so much as it is in vague imagery of the exotic culled from Hollywood cliches and Mother Theresa infomercials. These are colonialist visions of riotous colors from half-remembered dreams in which Hanuman spirits Sita from the citadels of the evil Ravana even as the British Raj brings the nation under its yoke in order to propagate the poppy that will be so instrumental in bringing the Chinese under the heel of Western powers. Knowing that I'm not even glimpsing one quarter of the reality of what daily living is actually like, I devour book after book set in these tropical metropolises to sate my hungry imagination as I scrimp and save in order that I may someday make it to the teeming streets of Mumbai or the spice loving kitchens of Chennai.

Having read quite a few different works from authors whose minds have also been ensnared by this particular corner of the globe, ranging from the classic to the contemporary, I've come to find that there some very definite archetypes that writers tend to fall back on when writing about the subcontinent. There are those that tend to write about the white experience in India, from the outright xenophobia of Dan Simmons' Song of Kali to the genteel indictment of Colonial racism offered up in E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. There are those who write about the Indian immigrant experience, of those who have left their homeland behind in search of the better life just across the horizon, from Monica Ali's Brick Lane to Jumpha Lahiri's Namesake, though in my opinion most successfully in Salman Rushdie's oft-maligned opus, The Satanic Verses.

Finally, and most germane to the purposes of this review, there are those who like to revel in the dirt, disease, and decay of India. Those who seem to take a particularly perverse joy in the rampant poverty, splashing titillating descriptions of the sewage and sweat and rickshaws and families packed one atop another in slums awaiting one middling earthquake before collapsing like so many stacked playing cards. To them it seems that endemic poverty and disease is a fun bit of shock to throw at readers, poverty porn to warm the cockles of Western readers as they imagine themselves living in such a world. Writers of this sort tend to be of a couple sorts. There are Western writers whose characters tend to be of the damaged-yet-benevolent white man variety, such as Lin the junky-doctor in Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram or the naive-yet-effusive travelers of the sort that Will Rhode described in his forgettable Paperback Original, who use decadence as a spice, to add a bit of thrill to their pulse-racing pages. Then there are the Dickensian writers, authors like Q&A's Vikas Swarup, who love few things more than crafting another rags to riches tale of crossing caste boundaries and living the American dream, and it is this category that Aravind Adiga's Man Booker winning The White Tiger sits squarely within.

Being the memoir of Munna/Balram, a precocious (of course) boy from the darkest depths of rural India who, yearning to break free from the trappings of caste poverty, never stops angling for a better job, a better lot, a better life. First moving up the ranks of the tea shop he is destined to serve in until he dies, then striking out for the big bad city wherein he endeavors to find the respect that his politico bosses, by dint of status, wealth and corruption, are afforded so wantonly. As he comes to understand the many ways in which he is ritually humiliated and kept subservient, something almost resembling class consciousness grows in his heart until he finally slits his master's throat and disappears with a large sum of cash. These aren't spoilers, the narrator himself admits as much within the first few pages.

The writing is nothing special to write home about, others have described the same scenery with as much (or better) aplomb- Adiga's descriptions have none of the poetry and imagery that Arundhati Roy brings to her every sentence. The real substance of the story lies in Adiga's chronicling of the resentment that builds within his upwardly mobile limo driver, listing every slight and backhanded insult in such a way as to make the inevitable murder so much more palatable. After a particularly bruising experience in which Balram is forced to sign a fake confession to protect his master's wife, I wanted to skip ahead just so I could taste the bloody revenge before its appointed hour.

While a worthwhile enough read, this Booker winner pales when stood along winner's of years past. Adiga is following the path that such luminaries as eternally-reviled Rushdie and fantastically incendiary Roy have trod with such alacrity, but his brief effort will likely have little of the staying power that any of the other award winners named herein have carved out for themselves. Still, it was enormously entertaining and would be ideal to wile away an afternoon at the beach. ...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Jul 14, 2009 Pam rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

Entertaining and serious at the same time. A remarkable 1st novel. Balram Halwai explains modern India & his place in it and how he escaped his destiny as someone born in "Darkness", the servant class. Not a pretty story, but an engrossing one. Written as 6 long-ish emails, he narrates his rags-to-riches life story & includes lots of commentary on the state of the 2 Indias -- poor and rich, modern & high-tech. ...more

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Jul 22, 2009 Kim rated it really liked it

I really enjoyed the insight into Indian culture. The caste system is so inhumane and the suffering and indifference to suffering is difficult to understand.

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Sep 27, 2009 Gwen rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2010-read, book-club-recommendations, geographical

The White Tiger is an interesting tale of a self-professed murderer turned entrepreneur. Aravind Adiga writes the story in the form of long letters to the Primer of China. A man who will be visiting India to see how it is run business-wise. The White Tiger explains his upbringing in a rural Indian village and how he eventually became "successful", working nights doing something...Capitalism and democracy vs. communism...would be a good book club book.

This book was a relatively easy read, in term ...more

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Feb 27, 2009 Kathy rated it really liked it

This book is about India and what it is like to be a servant. Balram, the servant is on a journey to get out of his situation and become his own boss. Life in India is hard and there is a lot of corruption. The book is interesting and I learned much about life in India.

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Nov 27, 2008 Widyoseno rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize, favorites

I love how Adiga wrote India in details in different ways, how he described the custom there and how he showed the disparaging differences between the haves and not-haves.
Last pages are so amazingly written.

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Feb 25, 2010 Adam rated it really liked it

This is the stories about the humble beginnings of an Indian ganster. It was a really enjoyable, hip read. India is the only foreign country I've visited, and thus, I enjoy learning more about the culture. The only thing I wished for was more time with the protagonist as the White Tiger. I expected the story to be a lot more gritty than it was, but maybe that was the whole point. Anyways, it's an excellent pickup. ...more

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Jan 20, 2009 Benjamin rated it really liked it

A well written and fast moving book that breaks the shackles and stale conventions of most books set in india. While it may be marketed as a crime fiction novel it is more a look at Indian culture and politics, but in a way that is enjoyable to read.

Adiga is a gifted author; the text flows, the imagery is compelling and the characters seem real.

Well worth reading.

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