Aravind Adiga wins literature's Man Booker prize - USATODAY.com Aravind Adiga wins literature's Man Booker prize Updated Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger scored the Man Booker prize. LONDON (AP)  Aravind Adiga has won the prestigious Man Booker prize for his first novel. Adiga's novel The White Tiger features a protagonist who will use any means necessary to fulfill his dream of escaping impoverished village life for success in the big city. The judges also praised the book's humor. The 34-year-old Adiga is the youngest of the finalists for the prize. Irish writer Sebastian Barry was the bookies' favorite Tuesday in a wide-open field of finalists for the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction. Barry's The Secret Scripture, a story of misery, memories and secrets in 1930s Ireland, was 5/2 front-runner among six contenders for the award, according to bookmakers William Hill. Rival bookies Ladbrokes had Barry as 2/1 front-runner. Both firms had Indian writer Amitav Ghosh as second-favorite for Sea of Poppies. The winner will be announced late Tuesday.

The 50,000 pound (US$88,000) prize is among the world's highest-profile literary awards, open to novels in English by writers from Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth of former British colonies. Winning brings a big boost in profile, and usually in sales. Playwright and novelist Barry was previously nominated in 2005 for A Long Long Way. Victory would make him the third Irish winner in four years. The 2005 prize went to John Banville for the The Sea, and last year's winner was Ireland's Anne Enright for The Gathering. The 2006 winner was India's Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss. This year's Booker shortlist lacks the star power and household names of some previous contests. Few of the six shortlisted authors are household names, and two are first-time authors: Indian novelist Aravind Adiga, nominated for The White Tiger— the story of a man's dreams of escaping poor village life for success in the big city — and Australia's Steve Toltz, shortlisted for sprawling father-son saga A Fraction of the Whole.

Two English authors are also in the running — Linda Grant for The Clothes on Their Backs and Philip Hensher for The Northern Clemency. Among those snubbed by the judging panel was Salman Rushdie, who was on the prize's 13-book long-list for the Enchantress of Florence. In July, Rushdie was named the greatest-ever winner of the literary prize for Midnight's Children, which took the Booker in 1981. Graham Sharpe, Booker expert at bookies William Hill, said the judges' decision to omit another highly praised book, Joseph O'Neill's post-9/11 New York saga Netherland, from the shortlist was inexplicable. "It's certainly not a vintage year either for the quality of the books or the gambling on the outcome," Sharpe said. "You haven't got the big names, the controversy — anything to spark a flame of interest in the shortlist." William Hill put 7/2 odds on Ghosh and Grant, followed by Toltz at 9/2. Adiga and Hensher were both 5/1 outsiders. The award was founded in 1969 and was long known as the Booker Prize.

It was renamed when the financial services conglomerate Man Group PLC began sponsoring it five years ago. On the Net: Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Posted E-mail | Print | To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more .

Man Booker Prize won by first-time Indian author Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger - Telegraph Man Booker Prize won by first-time Indian author Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga: Man Booker prize winner 2008 By Stephen Adams 12:01AM BST 15 Oct 2008 Aravind Adiga, a first time Indian author, has won the £50,000 Man Booker prize for a novel that examines "the dark side of India", writes Stephen Adams Telegraph Booker Prize coverage in full Adiga, 33, became the second-youngest winner of the prestigious literary award for his debut novel The White Tiger. He was presented with the award at a dinner in the Guildhall in London. The White Tiger follows a poor servant from an Indian village who moves to the city, becomes corrupted by modern life, and ends up becoming a murderer. The five members of the judging panel, chaired by former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo, took more than two hours to reach their decision.

Mr Portillo said of choosing the winning book: "My criteria were, 'Does this book knock my socks off?' And it did." He said: "I think what set this book apart was its originality; for many of us this is entirely new territory - India the dark side. It was in many ways perfect." For the first half of the novel the reader is invited to empathise with the "hero" of the piece, Balram, before he turns into a "thorough villain". Mr Portillo said there was no "blood on the floor" during the judging process, which whittled the short-listed six novels down to two, but added: "It was an emotionally draining experience." In choosing Adiga, the panel yet again cast aside the favourite, this year The Secret Scripture by Irishman Sebastian Barry, a novel about an old woman reminiscing on her life as she awaits the closure of an old people's home. It is the second time Barry has been shunned, after being short-listed to win in 2005. This time he was tipped as 2-1 favourite by the bookmaker Ladbrokes. However, not picking the favourite has become something of a habit at the Man Booker Prize.

Adiga was a 5/1 outsider for the prize, the second-longest odds of the six on the shortlist. Janine Cook, fiction buyer for Waterstone's, described The White Tiger as "an amazing debut". She said: "Some of the biggest selling Booker victors have come from India, and this is one of the most compulsive Booker winners for years. It's an amazing debut that has already done incredibly well for us, but will now move to a higher level altogether." The online bookseller amazon.co.uk predicted The White Tiger would see a sales uplift of 700 per cent. Kes Nielsen, head of books buying at Amazon.co.uk, said it was "hugely exciting" from a bookseller's point of view to have a year not dominated by "an obvious winner or a best-selling 'brand author' ". "It's a new piece of business for everybody," he said. Adiga, who studied at Columbia University in New York and Oxford University, is a former correspondent for Time magazine in India. He lives in Mumbai.

Nigerian Ben Okri was the youngest ever winner in the prize's 40 year history, claiming the Booker in 1991 for The Famished Road aged 32. There have been two former debut novelist winners - Indian Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things in 1997 and Australian DBC Pierre for Vernon God Little in 2003. The short-listed novels were: Aravind Adiga wins Man Booker prize for first novel The Associated Press Published Tuesday, October 14, 2008 9:50PM EDT LONDON - Aravind Adiga won the prestigious Man Booker award Tuesday for his first novel "The White Tiger." Adiga won the $87,000 prize for his book about a protagonist who will use any means necessary to fulfill his dream of escaping impoverished village life for success in the big city. At 34, Adiga was the youngest of the finalists for the literary prize. The chairman of the judges, Michael Portillo, said the book was an impressive work. "The novel is in many ways perfect. It is quite difficult to find any structural flaws with it," he said.

Some have accused Adiga, who lives in Mumbai, of painting a negative picture of modern India and its huge underclass. But Adiga said he wanted to write about all aspects of Indian society. "In India if you really want to get out and do a book you have to make a conscious effort to connect to people in every conceivable way, " he told the British Broadcasting Corp. after winning the prize. Adiga is the fourth Indian-born author to win the prize, and joins compatriots Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. A fifth winner, V.S. Naipaul is of Indian ancestry. The other authors short-listed for the prize were Steve Toltz, Sebastian Barry, Amitav Ghosh, Linda Grant, and Philip Hensher. Related Links Aravind Adiga Wins Literature's Man Booker Prize - washingtonpost.com Aravind Adiga Wins Literature's Man Booker Prize Tuesday, October 14, 2008; 5:37 PM LONDON -- Aravind Adiga has won the prestigious Man Booker prize for his first novel.

Adiga's novel "The White Tiger" features a protagonist who will use any means necessary to fulfill his dream of escaping impoverished village life for success in the big city. The judges also praised the book's humor. The 34-year-old Adiga is the youngest of the finalists for the prize. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. LONDON (AP) _ Irish writer Sebastian Barry was the bookies' favorite Tuesday in a wide-open field of finalists for the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction. Barry's "The Secret Scripture," a story of misery, memories and secrets in 1930s Ireland, was 5/2 front-runner among six contenders for the award, according to bookmakers William Hill. Rival bookies Ladbrokes had Barry as 2/1 front-runner. Both firms had Indian writer Amitav Ghosh as second-favorite for "Sea of Poppies." The winner will be announced late Tuesday.

The 50,000 pound (US$88,000) prize is among the world's highest-profile literary awards, open to novels in English by writers from Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth of former British colonies. Winning brings a big boost in profile, and usually in sales. Playwright and novelist Barry was previously nominated in 2005 for "A Long Long Way." Victory would make him the third Irish winner in four years. The 2005 prize went to John Banville for the "The Sea," and last year's winner was Ireland's Anne Enright for "The Gathering." The 2006 winner was India's Kiran Desai for "The Inheritance of Loss." This year's Booker shortlist lacks the star power and household names of some previous contests.

Few of the six shortlisted authors are household names, and two are first-time authors: Indian novelist Aravind Adiga, nominated for "The White Tiger" _ the story of a man's dreams of escaping poor village life for success in the big city _ and Australia's Steve Toltz, shortlisted for sprawling father-son saga "A Fraction of the Whole." Two English authors are also in the running _ Linda Grant for "The Clothes on Their Backs" and Philip Hensher for "The Northern Clemency." Among those snubbed by the judging panel was Salman Rushdie, who was on the prize's 13-book long-list for the "Enchantress of Florence." In July, Rushdie was named the greatest-ever winner of the literary prize for "Midnight's Children," which took the Booker in 1981. Graham Sharpe, Booker expert at bookies William Hill, said the judges' decision to omit another highly praised book, Joseph O'Neill's post-9/11 New York saga "Netherland," from the shortlist was inexplicable. "It's certainly not a vintage year either for the quality of the books or the gambling on the outcome," Sharpe said.

"You haven't got the big names, the controversy _ anything to spark a flame of interest in the shortlist." William Hill put 7/2 odds on Ghosh and Grant, followed by Toltz at 9/2. Adiga and Hensher were both 5/1 outsiders. The award was founded in 1969 and was long known as the Booker Prize. It was renamed when the financial services conglomerate Man Group PLC began sponsoring it five years ago. ___ Novel About India Wins the Man Booker Prize - The New York Times The New York Times Europe |Novel About India Wins the Man Booker Prize Search Novel About India Wins the Man Booker Prize By VICTORIA YOUNG Continue reading the main story LONDON — Aravind Adiga, 33, won the 40th Man Booker prize on Tuesday night for his debut novel, “The White Tiger,” a vivid exploration of India ’s class struggle told through the story of a village boy who becomes the chauffeur to a rich man. Mr. Adiga, who lives in Mumbai, was born in India and brought up partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford and is a former correspondent for Time magazine in India.

He is the second youngest writer to win the award; Ben Okri was 32 when he won for “The Famished Road” in 1991. Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister and the chairman of this year’s panel of judges, praised Mr. Adiga’s novel, saying that the short list had contained a series of “extraordinarily readable page-turners.” However, Mr. Adiga’s book had prevailed, he said, “because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure.” Mr. Adiga said his book was an “attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India — the voice of the colossal underclass.” Photo Aravind Adiga after winning the 2008 Man Booker prize in London. Credit Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters “This voice was not captured,” he added, “and I wanted to do so without sentimentality or portraying them as mirthless humorless weaklings as they are usually.” When he accepted the award, Mr. Adiga dedicated it to “the people of New Delhi where I lived and where I wrote this book.” When asked what he would do with the money, Mr.

Adiga joked, “The first thing I am going to do is to find a bank that I can actually put it in.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The Man Booker prize, Britain ’s best-known and most generous literary award, is given annually to a novel written by an author from Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth nations and is accompanied by a check for £50,000 — about $86,000 — as well as an inevitable increase in sales. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy This year’s list of finalists was one of the least star-studded in recent years. It included two first-time novelists, and several of the favorites were snubbed by judges. Joseph O’Neill’s critically acclaimed “Netherland” was omitted from the short list, as was “The Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie. As a result, bookmakers were divided over the likely winner, oscillating between Mr.

Adiga and the Irish writer Sebastian Barry, 53, whose book “The Secret Scripture” is the story of an Irish patient in a mental hospital sharing her shocking family history with her psychiatrist. The other books on the shortlist were “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh, “The Clothes on Their Backs” by Linda Grant, “The Northern Clemency” by Philip Hensher and “A Fraction of the Whole” by Steve Toltz. A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: A Debut Novel About India Wins the Man Booker Prize. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe The White Tiger Study Guide from LitCharts | The creators of SparkNotes An interactive data visualization of The White Tiger's plot and themes. Brief Biography of Aravind Adiga Aravind Adiga is a writer and journalist raised in India and Australia. He studied English literature at Columbia College and Oxford University. Before pursuing his career as a fiction writer, Adiga worked as both a correspondent for Time Magazine and a financial journalist for the Financial Times.

His experience working as a business journalist caused him to mistrust business magazines and get-rich-quick literature, informing the tone with which he describes India’s economic boom in The White Tiger. He currently lives in Mumbai, India. Get the entire The White Tiger LitChart as a printable PDF. "My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S. Download it! Historical Context of The White Tiger The White Tiger takes place in modern day India, but Balram traces the socioeconomic inequality with which he struggles back to 1947: the year India gained its independence from Britain through the Indian Independence Act. The act made India independent, which quickly led to race riots between Muslim and Hindu Indians, and the establishment of Muslim Pakistan as a separate independent state. In the 1960s, shortly after gaining their independence, Indians abolished the Caste System, which had rigidly enforced the social role of all Indians under British Rule and for thousands of years before that. Balram believes that the disorganization and chaos following the end of the caste system has contributed to even more extreme inequality. The action of The White Tiger takes place in economically flourishing modern India.

After approaching bankruptcy in 1991, the Indian government received a major loan from the International Monetary Fund and began a program of economic liberalization, resulting in a high rate of economic growth and foreign investment that continues to this day. Unfortunately, the economic boom has also drastically increased income inequality. The White Tiger tells the story of those left behind in the midst of India’s rapid economic rise. Other Books Related to The White Tiger Adiga considers a range of authors from different literary periods as his personal influences. He identifies three black American novelists –Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison—as his primary influences in writing The White Tiger. Ellison’s Invisible Man in particular seeks to give the invisible, disenfranchised members of American society – namely, a black man – a voice, just as Adiga reveals the injustices that thousands of poor Indians continue to suffer today through Balram’s story.

Balram’s belief in himself as an exceptional person or White Tiger, and his related belief that he is entitled to live according to his own alternative moral standards, is similar to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in which the central character – Raskolnikov — convinces himself that his exceptional need and capabilities justify murdering and robbing a defenseless old woman, just as Balram’s drive him to murder his master. Yet the contrast between the two books is also instructive. Raskolnikov commits his crime, is driven almost mad by guilt, ultimately confesses (and would have been caught anyway), and then has a religious epiphany in a Siberian prison camp while with the woman he loves who followed him to the camp. Balram commits his crime, feels a little guilt, cuts himself off from his family forever (and likely dooms his family to death), bribes the police to make himself invulnerable, and luxuriates in his success and holds himself up as an entrepreneurial exemplar.

This contrast illustrates a tremendous difference between the two societies depicted in Crime and Punishment and The White Tiger, one with the culture and institutions that result in crime being punished both morally and legally, the other so corrupt that crime can be seen as the perpetrator as necessary, as moral, as a path to well-earned wealth. Key Facts about The White Tiger Full Title: The White Tiger When Written: 2005-2008 Where Written: USA and India When Published: 2008 Genre: Novel Setting: Modern day India Climax: The White Tiger does not strictly conform to a linear, chronological format, as Balram’s narration jumps constantly between different periods of his life. However, the novel is loosely structured around Balram’s murder of his master Mr. Ashok. His decision to record his life story is in part an attempt to explain the series of events that led to the crime, and to describe life in its aftermath. Antagonist: While Balram’s master Ashok may be his most obvious antagonist, Balram perceives many characters in the novel to be his enemies.

These characters include his own family members, particularly his grandmother Kusum, as well as Ashok’s family: the Stork, Mukesh Sir, and Pinky Madam. Finally, his fellow servants in the Stork’s household, Ram Bahadur and Ram Persad, are also briefly his antagonists. Point of View: The White Tiger is the first-person narrative of Balram Halwai’s life. Balram recounts his story in a letter to a visiting Chinese official with the goal of educating the official about entrepreneurship in India. Extra Credit for The White Tiger Man Booker. When The White Tiger won the 2008 Man-Booker literary prize, Adiga became the fourth Indian-born author to win the prestigious award. Cite This Page Aravind Adiga's debut novel, The White Tiger, provokes roars of anger in India | Books | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close How do you get the nerve, I ask Aravind Adiga, to write a novel about the experiences of the Indian poor? After all, you're an enviably bright young thing, a middle-class, Madras-born, Oxford-educated ex-Time magazine correspondent?

How would you understand what your central character, the downtrodden, uneducated son of a rickshaw puller turned amoral entrepreneur and killer, is going through? It's the morning after Adiga, 33, won the £50,000 Man Booker award with his debut novel The White Tiger , which reportedly blew the socks off Michael Portillo, the chair of judges, and, more importantly, is already causing offence in Adiga's homeland for its defiantly unglamorous portrait of India's economic miracle. For a western reader, too, Adiga's novel is bracing: there is an unremitting realism usually airbrushed from Indian films and novels. It makes Salman Rushdie's Booker-winning chronicle of post-Raj India, Midnight's Children (a book that Adiga recognises as a powerful influence on his work), seem positively twee. The Indian tourist board must be livid. Adiga, sipping tea in a central London boardroom, is upset by my question. Or as affronted as a man who has been exhausted by the demands of the unexpected win and the subsequent media hoopla can be.

Guarded about his private life, he looks at me with tired eyes and says: "I don't think a novelist should just write about his own experiences. Yes, I am the son of a doctor, yes, I had a rigorous formal education, but for me the challenge of a novelist is to write about people who aren't anything like me." On a shortlist that included several books written by people very much like their central characters (Philip Hensher, for example, writing about South Yorkshire suburbanites during the miners' strike, or Linda Grant writing about a London writer exploring her Jewish heritage), the desire not to navel-gaze is surprising, even refreshing. But isn't there a problem: Adiga might come across as a literary tourist ventriloquising others' suffering and stealing their miserable stories to fulfil his literary ambitions? "Well, this is the reality for a lot of Indian people and it's important that it gets written about, rather than just hearing about the 5% of people in my country who are doing well. In somewhere like Bihar there will be no doctors in the hospital. In northern India politics is so corrupt that it makes a mockery of democracy.

This is a country where the poor fear tuberculosis, which kills 1,000 Indians a day, but people like me - middle-class people with access to health services that are probably better than England's - don't fear it at all. It's an unglamorous disease, like so much of the things that the poor of India endure. "At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the west, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society. That's what writers like Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens did in the 19th century and, as a result, England and France are better societies. That's what I'm trying to do - it's not an attack on the country, it's about the greater process of self-examination." That, though, makes Adiga's novel sound like funless didacticism. Thankfully - for all its failings (comparisons with the accomplished sentences of Sebastian Barry's shortlisted The Secret Scripture could only be unfavourable) - The White Tiger is nothing like that.

Instead, it has an engaging, gobby, megalomaniac, boss-killer of a narrator who reflects on his extraordinary rise from village teashop waiter to success as an entrepreneur in the alienated, post-industrial, call-centre hub of Bangalore. Balram Halwai narrates his story through letters he writes, but doesn't send, to the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao. Wen is poised to visit India to learn why it is so good at producing entrepreneurs, so Balram presumes to tell him how to win power and influence people in the modern India. Balram's story, though, is a tale of bribery, corruption, skulduggery, toxic traffic jams, theft and murder. Whether communist China can import this business model is questionable. In any event, Balram tells his reader that the yellow and the brown men will take over the world from the white man, who has become (and this is where Balram's analysis gets shaky) effete through toleration of homosexuality, too slim and physically weakened by overexposure to mobile phones.

Halwai has come from what Adiga calls the Darkness - the heart of rural India - and manages to escape his family and poverty by becoming chauffeur to a landlord from his village, who goes to Delhi to bribe government officials. Why did he make Halwai a chauffeur? "Because of the whole active-passive thing. The chauffeur is the servant but he is, at least while he's driving, in charge, so the whole relationship is subverted." Disappointingly, Adiga only knows of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic from reading Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. But that dialectic is the spine of his novel: the servant kills his master to achieve his freedom. The White Tiger teems with indignities masquerading as employee duties. Such, Adiga maintains, is India - even as Delhi rises like a more eastern Dubai, call-centres suck young people from villages and India experiences the pangs of urbanisation that racked the west two centuries ago. "Friends who came to India would always say to me it was a surprise that there was so little crime and that made me wonder why." Balram supplies an answer: servitude.

"A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9% - as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way - to exist in perpetual servitude." What Balram calls the trustworthiness of servants is the basis of the entire Indian economy; unlike China, he reflects, India doesn't need a dictatorship or secret police to keep its people grimly achieving economic goals. "If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them," says Adiga. "That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like." Adiga conceived the novel when he was travelling in India and writing for Time magazine. "I spent a lot of time hanging around stations and talking to rickshaw pullers." What struck him was the physical difference between the poor and the rich: "In India, it's the rich who have problems with obesity. And the poor are darker-skinned because they work outside and often work without their tops on so you can see their ribs. But also their intelligence impressed me.

What rickshaw pullers, especially, reminded me of was black Americans, in the sense that they are witty, acerbic, verbally skilled and utterly without illusions about their rulers." It is not surprising then that the greatest literary influences on the book were three great African-American 20th-century novelists - Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Richard Wright. "They all wrote about race and class, while later black writers focus on just class. Ellison's Invisible Man was extremely important to me. That book was disliked by white and blacks. My book too will cause widespread offence. Balram is my invisible man, made visible. This white tiger will break out of his cage." For Indian readers, one of the most upsetting parts of that break-out is that Halwai casts off his family. "This is a shameful and dislocating thing for an Indian to do," says Adiga. "In India, there has never been strong central political control, which is probably why the family is still so important. If you're rude to your mother in India, it's a crime as bad as stealing would be here. But the family ties get broken or at least stretched when anonymous, un-Indian cities like Bangalore draw people from the villages.

These really are the new tensions of India, but Indians don't think about them. The middle- classes, especially, think of themselves still as victims of colonial rule. But there is no point any more in someone like me thinking of myself as a victim of you [Adiga has cast me, not for the first time, as a colonial oppressor]. India and China are too powerful to be controlled by the west any more. "We've got to get beyond that as Indians and take responsibility for what is holding us back." What is holding India back? "The corruption, lack of health services for the poor and the presumption that the family is always the repository of good." Our time is nearly over. Adiga doesn't know how he will spend his prize money, isn't even sure if there's a safe bank in which to deposit it. Doesn't he fear attacks at home for his portrayal of India? After all, the greatest living Indian painter, MF Husain, lives in exile. "I'm in a different position from Husain. Fortunately, the political class doesn't read.

He lives in exile because his messages got through, but mine probably won't." Adiga, who says he has written his second novel but won't talk about it ("It might be complete crap, so there's no point"), flies home to Mumbai today to resume his bachelor life. His most pressing problem is that Mumbai landlords don't let flats to single men. Why? "They think we're more likely to be terrorists. I'd just like to say, through your pages, that I am not. In fact, if you check the biographies of Indian terrorists you'll find they are mostly family men who are well-off. It's a trend that needs to be investigated." Possibly in a new novel by Adiga, yet again analysing the unbearably poignant torments of the emerging new India. Ideally, though, with jokes. · This article was amended on Saturday October 18 2008. We were wrong to originally describe author Philip Hensher as Sheffield-born; he was born and lives in London. This has been corrected.

Aravind Adiga, one of two debut novelists on the Man Booker shortlist, awarded £50,000 prize for The White Tiger Published: 14 Oct 2008 This year's Booker prize winner, Aravind Adiga, talks to Stuart Jeffries Published: 16 Oct 2008 This is fundamentally an outsider's view and a superficial one. There are so many alternative Indias, uncontacted and unheard Published: 14 Oct 2008 John Sutherland: Which category of Booker winner does Aravind Adiga fit into? Published: 14 Oct 2008 How did The White Tiger capture the Booker? | Books | The Guardian Books blog How did The White Tiger capture the Booker? (Far leftfield to R) Aravind Adiga, Sebastian Barry, Amitav Ghosh, Linda Grant, Philip Hensher, Steve Toltz. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP Wednesday 15 October 2008 05.15 EDT First published on Wednesday 15 October 2008 05.15 EDT Share on Messenger Close Did anyone expect The White Tiger to win?

Certainly, it struck me as a choice that came from way out of leftfield. I'd also suggest that the consensus in the publishing world seemed to be bemusement as much as disappointment, since last night I was in the privileged - though slightly bewildering position - of hovering between the Booker parties held by Penguin and Little, Brown. But the triumph of Aravind Adiga has wrong-footed me as far as this blog goes. I find myself unprepared. I had plenty of mental notes made about the others. Had my personal favourite Linda Grant won, I was ready to declare it a quiet triumph: a victory for craftsmanship, sharp characterisation, fierce intelligence and above all human warmth. If the judges had gone for bookies' favourite Sebastian Barry I was prepared to admit that much of the writing was beautiful even if some of it struck me as overwrought. Were Steve Toltz to have scooped the honours I would perhaps have complained about A Fraction Of The Whole's lack of restraint , but agreed that this was a talented writer who is hopefully on the road to something very impressive in the long run.

Had Amitav Ghosh won, I had mentally prepared a few spiteful lines about how typical its heavily dealt-with themes of post-colonial guilt were to Booker victors. I'm also now embarrassed to admit that if Philip Hensher had taken the honours, I was ready to be yet more spiteful and declare it a Tory plot and lay down a few conspiracy theories about how Michael Portillo's chairmanship had returned the most conspicuously rightwing Booker winner to date. As it is, I'm left grasping. I'm annoyed and embarrassed to admit that I hadn't really considered the White Tiger as a contender. Although I enjoyed the book, I had discounted it as too rough and too much of an over-enthusiastic debut to really make the running. More fool me. What's more – and perhaps in credit to Portillo's ability to sublimate his own personal politics to the cause of literary justice - this year's winner is fiercely anti-capitalist. Fierce, indeed, in every sense of the word. It's an angry, passionate polemic that may not be as subtle as some of the other contenders, but certainly hits hard when it comes to social injustice and human stupidity.

It is, in short, an admirably tough book. Now that my initial disappointment that my favourite hasn't won has faded slightly, I'm even starting to consider The White Tiger a daring choice. Perhaps (as was last night suggested to me) it does sometimes read like a Vanity Fair article with fangs, but still it seems a creditable winner. Certainly, I didn't get the sinking feeling I got last year. Whereas the success of Anne Enright's The Gathering smacked of compromise, horse trading and each judge's third choice winning through, The White Tiger is a very different kind of animal. It is - hopefully - a book that triumphed after a real fight and thanks to its sharp claws rather than thanks to a dull statistical analysis. It could even be said that this decision marks a suitably provocative end to a very interesting year. True, there have been plenty of moans about the quality of the shortlist, but at least the whole thing has been debate-worthy. The award has also fulfilled its most useful function in directing the spotlight onto the talents of a few writers that might otherwise have been missed.

I'm personally grateful to have been introduced to all of Linda Grant, Steve Toltz, Sebastian Barry, Philip Hensher, Amitav Ghosh, and Aravind Adiga. This year is further outstanding in the juicy intrigue surrounding the books that didn't make the final six. Having just read Netherland, I'm absolutely baffled as to why it wasn't in the reckoning. Even discounting the fact that I'm predisposed to enjoy a book about cricket and New York it struck me as a moving and impressive book by any standard. Meanwhile, the absence of Rushdie also seems odd. OK, The Enchantress Of Florence isn't as good as Midnight's Children. But it is good. And where were Ondaatje? Where was Andrew Crumey's Sputnik Caledonia? Finally, absurd as it may be that this is the first year a thriller even made the longlist, why pick such an odd and ultimately ineffective one as Child 44? So 2008 is a year I'll be pondering for a while to come. But will The White Tiger stand that test of time? Over to you.

Topics Aravind Adiga, one of two debut novelists on the Man Booker shortlist, awarded £50,000 prize for The White Tiger Published: 14 Oct 2008 The White Tiger: Amazon.co.uk: Aravind Adiga: 9781416562597: Books The White Tiger Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App .

Product details Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (1 April 2008) Language: English Product Dimensions: 21.7 x 15.3 x 2.6 cm Average Customer Review: Product Description Amazon Review Winning the Man Booker prize is something that most authors dream of, although -- ironically -- the reputation of the prize itself was under siege a few years ago. Books that won the award were acquiring a reputation of being difficult and inaccessible, but those days appear to be over -- and unarguable proof may be found in the 2008 winner, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Apart from its considerable literary merit, the novel is the most compelling of pageturners (in the old-fashioned sense of that phrase) and offers a picture of modern India that is as evocative as it is unflattering. The protagonist, too, is drawn in the most masterly of fashion. Balram Halwai, the eponymous white tiger, is a diminutive, overweight ex-teashop worker who now earns his living as a chauffeur.

But this is only one side of his protean personality; he deals in confidence scams, over-ambitious business promotions (built on the shakiest of foundations) and enjoys approaching life with a philosophical turn of mind. But is Balram also a murderer? We learn the answer as we devour these 500 odd pages. Born into an impoverished family, Balram is removed from school by his parents in order to earn money in a thankless job: shop employee. He is forced into banal, mind-numbing work. But Balram dreams of escaping -- and a chance arises when a well-heeled village landlord takes him on as a chauffeur for his son (although the duties involve transporting the latter's wife and two Pomeranian dogs). From the rich new perspective offered to him in this more interesting job, Balram discovers New Delhi, and a vision of the city changes his life forever. His learning curve is very steep, and he quickly comes to believe that the way to the top is by the most expedient means. And if that involves committing the odd crime of violence, he persuades himself that this is what successful people must do.

The story of the amoral protagonist at the centre of this fascinating narrative is, of course, what keeps the reader comprehensively gripped, but perhaps the real achievement of the book is in its picture of two Indias: the bleak, soul-destroying poverty of village life and the glittering prizes to be found in the big city. The book cleverly avoids fulfilling any of the expectations a potential reader might have -- except that of instructing and entertaining. The White Tiger will have many readers anxious to see what Adiga will do next. --Barry Forshaw -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfÃ¼gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels. Review "The perfect antidote to lyrical India." - "Publishers Weekly" "Compelling, angry, and darkly humorous, "The White Tiger" is an unexpected journey into a new India. Aravind Adiga is a talent to watch." -- Mohsin Hamid, author of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" "Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger" is one of the most powerful books I've read in decades. No hyperbole.

This debut novel from an Indian journalist living in Mumbai hit me like a kick to the head -- the same effect Richard Wright's "Native Son" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" had. - "USA Today" ""The White Tiger" echoes masterpieces of resistance and oppression (both "The Jungle" and "Native Son" come to mind) [and] contains passages of startling beauty." - Lee Thomas, "San Francisco Chronicle" "This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before. Adiga is a global Gorky, a modern Kipling who grew up, and grew up mad. The future of the novel lies here." - John Burdett, author of "Bangkok 8 " "Compelling, angry, and darkly humorous, The White Tiger is an unexpected journey into a new India. Aravind Adiga is a talent to watch." -- Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist "An exhilarating, side-splitting account of India today, as well as an eloquent howl at her many injustices. Adiga enters the literary scene resplendent in battle dress and ready to conquer.

Let us bow to him." -- Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook "The perfect antidote to lyrical India." - Publishers Weekly "This fast-moving novel, set in India, is being sold as a corrective to the glib, dreamy exoticism Western readers often get...If these are the hands that built India, their grandkids really are going to kick America's ass...BUY IT." - New York Magazine "Darkly comic...Balram's appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations of the social order are both winning and unsettling." - The New Yorker "Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger is one of the most powerful books I've read in decades. No hyperbole. This debut novel from an Indian journalist living in Mumbai hit me like a kick to the head -- the same effect Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man had. - USA Today "Extraordinary and brilliant... At first, this novel seems like a straightforward pulled-up-by-your-bootstraps tale, albeit given a dazzling twist by the narrator's sharp and satirical eye for the realities of life for India's poor...

But as the narrative draws the reader further in, and darkens, it becomes clear that Adiga is playing a bigger game... Adiga is a real writer - that is to say, someone who forges an original voice and vision. There is the voice of Halwai - witty, pithy, ultimately psychopathic... Remarkable... I will not spoil the effect of this remarkable novel by giving away ... what form his act of blood-stained entrepreneurship takes. Suffice to say that I was reminded of a book that is totally different in tone and style, Richard Wright's Native Son, a tale of the murderous career of a black kid from the Chicago ghetto that awakened 1940s America to the reality of the racial divide.

Whether The White Tiger will do the equivalent for today's India - we shall see." - Adam Lively, The Sunday Times (London) "Fierce and funny...A satire as sharp as it gets." - Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times "There is a new Muse stalking global narrative: brown, angry, hilarious, half-educated, rustic-urban, iconoclastic, paan-spitting, word-smithing--and in the case of Aravind Adiga she hails from a town called Laxmangarh. This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before. Adiga is a global Gorky, a modern Kipling who grew up, and grew up mad.

The future of the novel lies here." - John Burdett, author of Bangkok 8 "Adiga's training as a journalist lends the immediacy of breaking news to his writing, but it is his richly detailed storytelling that will captivate his audience...The White Tiger echoes masterpieces of resistance and oppression (both The Jungle and Native Son come to mind) [and] contains passages of startling beauty...A book that carefully balances fable and pure observation." - Lee Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfÃ¼gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Question: Aravind Adiga’s novel ‘The White Tiger’ won which prestigious award in 2008?
Answer: The Man Booker Prize