The Booker in the Nineties was all big ideas, grand narratives and excess, a decade distilled in book form under the glare of the tabloid press. In some sense this held true as the new millennium rolled over… and it some senses, well, it didn’t at all. As in the rest of life, and culture, the Booker in the Noughties felt more fragmented. More individual stories shining a light on hitherto ignored groups, but with the dominant Bookerati never too far around the corner.

The White Tiger is a darkly humorous satire told in the voice of Balram Halwai, brought up in village poverty in what he describes as India's "darkness." The novel is told in the form of a letter from Balram to the then Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. From a lower caste (by name, a sweetmaker) Balram sees his father die in poverty and vows to escape the "Rooster Coop" system that enslaves millions of Indians while others prosper in "the Light."