The White tiger — Aravind Adiga

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008, White tiger is a breezy read filled with dark humour and hard hitting criticism of India. The author gives a bleak picture of a morally corrupt and dangerously volatile caste struggles. The book may seem filled with exaggerated India-bashing told through a Bollywoodish tale of rags to riches, but no honest reader would deny the fact that the things narrated in the book are not only possible but happens very often in most part of the country, especially the caste struggles.

Through his protagonist Balram, the Author tries to give a picture of the never ending war between the powerful and the powerless, the struggles and humiliations faced by the poor and the lower castes that we hear everyday in the news. The author uses lots of symbols and metaphors to support his narrative. One such metaphor, the Rooster coop is used for describing the oppression of India’s poor. Roosters in a coop at the market watch one another slaughtered one by one, but are unable or unwilling to rebel and break out of the coop. Similarly, India’s poor people see one another crushed by the wealthy and powerful, defeated by the staggering inequality of Indian society, but are unable to escape the same fate.

Despite all the wit and brutal cynicism, as a native Indian, the voice of Balram lacked a bit of genuineness although the scenarios were very real. The critics and cynicism were apt at a macro level but when you go deeper into the character, there was a definite lack of authenticity. Author, at times, was so out of touch with his own creation, like a tourist watching sympathetically at the poor state of the country and ranting about it to his people back home. Moreover, the whole story is written like a letter to the Chinese supreme, which I felt very needless and gimmicky.

It is definitely funny and an enjoyable read and I would definitely recommend it for its remorseless and delightfully mordant wit but is it worthy of such a prestigious award. I don’t think so, The book is shallow, caricaturish and gimmicky, and does not contribute anything as a social/political novel. From a literary perspective, I felt disappointed with this book.

Aravind Adiga was born in 1974 in Chennai, and grew up in Mangalore in the south of India. He was educated at Columbia University in New York and Magdalen College, Oxford. His first novel, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2008. A second novel, Last Man in Tower, was published in 2011