The White Tiger (2008)
Who wrote it?
Aravind Adiga (1974-, active 2008-), born Madras (now Chennai), India. Adiga grew up in Mangalore, as part of a well-off family (his grandfather was former chairman of Karnataka Bank and his great-grandfather a congress politician.) His later life was more international, emigrating to Sydney with his family before studying at Columbia University in NYC (under Simon Schama) and Magdalen College, Oxford (where Hermione Lee was a tutor.)
He began his career as a financial journalist, with pieces in the Financial Times and Money, before becoming South Asia correspondent for Time magazine. In this period he wrote his debut novel, The White Tiger, which led him to win the Booker Prize at the first attempt, aged just 33. He now lives in Bangalore, after a period in Mumbai, and has published four further novels, most recently Amnesty in 2020.
What's it about?
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."
He becomes a driver for Ashok, the son of a local landlord. He moves with his boss and his wife, an Indian-American known as Pinky Madam, to Delhi, where the contrast between rich and poor is made even clearer by their proximity. He is exposed to corruption in Ashok's interactions with government officials and suffers abuse from both his superiors and his peers (who, he notes, have a role to play in the maintenance of the "Rooster Coop" system.)
When Pinky accidentally kills a child while driving drunk, Balram is encouraged to take the blame, before corrupt police dealing render his submission unnecessary. At this point he decides to kill Ashok, which he does before moving to Bangalore, where he in turn bribes police to start his own taxi business. He suspects his actions will have lead to retribution from his former superiors, in the form of the intimidation and probably murder of his family back home. He ends the novel by reflecting on this and concluding that it was worth it.
What I liked
This probably wins some sort of prize for being the most timely Booker winner to date. Its focus on corruption, globalisation, and extremes of wealth clearly hit home strongly in a year dominated by the emergence of the global Financial Crisis.
Despite this, it still feels fresh some 13 years later (unlike perhaps Vernon God Little, which I noted feels pretty dated already.) This is probably down to a mix of its subject matter remaining highly relevant, and the fact that it’s not overloaded with hypertopical references.
It may well also be the funniest winner to date, at least to my taste. I think I laughed out loud more than I have done in most of the other winners to date.
Even the format of the book contributes to its humour. Why is Balram writing to the Chinese Premier to tell his life story as a kind of dark confessional? The sheer madcap hubris of it all adds massively to the laughs.
It’s brutally sharp, and its simplicity and clarity only helps drive home its harsh home truths around the state of modern India.
It’s thematically super-dark, but never feels overbearing. It’s a breeze of a read and an absolute page-turner.
What I didn’t like
Very little. It may have lacked the depth and nuance of some of the many previous India-centric Booker winners (pretty much all of which have been great) but it makes up for it with its humour and lack of punch-pulling.
Others have criticized Balram’s character as stereotypical and/or unbelievable, but I didn’t really get that vibe.
Food & drink pairings
Paan, which has been a feature of every Indian winner since Midnight’s Children but feels graphically present here
Train station dosa, with potatoes removed
English Liquor, potentially bootlegged.
Fun facts
It's worth flagging that while the novel has had plenty of positive reviews in its lifetime, it has also faced criticism along the lines of it being "poverty porn" written by a relatively well-off man who has benefitted from an expensive liberal education. Some of these criticism came, unsurprisingly, from India itself (despite the book's instant bestseller status in the country.) Adiga unsurprisingly rejected this criticism at the time:
"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."
The book was released as a fairly high profile Netflix film in January 2021. Written and directed by Ramin Bahrani, it stars first-timer Adarsh Gourav as Balram, and former Miss World Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Pinky Madam. I'm quite excited to watch this one, but I've been holding off until finishing the book & blog post. Anyone seen it?
Judge Alex Clark is another one of those rare beasts who seemed to actually enjoy the process of being a Booker judge:
"It’s been not only an enjoyable process but also an instructive one [...] anatomising one’s taste and judgment and then communicating it to a group of people with equally strong views has been a wonderful challenge - not least because it makes for scrutiny of what it is that one values in fiction."
Vanquished Foes
Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)
Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies)
Linda Grant (The Clothes on Their Backs)
Philip Hensher (The Northern Clemency)
Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)
Big fan of Hensher and The Northern Clemency but still happy with the choice of winner. Not read any of the others. Any tips?
The 2008 Orange/Women's Prize went to Rose Tremain’s The Road Home, in a year with no overlap with the Booker (either this or last year’s) for the first time in a while.
Context
In 2008:
Global Financial Crisis
Barack Obama elected POTUS
Terrorist attacks across Mumbai kill 164
Sichuan Earthquake kills an estimated 87000 in China
Kosovo formally declares independence from Serbia
Georgia invades South Ossetia, sparking a war with Russia
Nepal votes to abolish its monarchy
Large Hadron Collider inaugurated in Geneva
Boris Johnson become Mayor of London
Beijing Summer Olympics
First all-English European Cup final sees Manchester United beat Chelsea
Lewis Hamilton wins his first Formula 1 World Championship
First release of Android mobile operating system
Bitcoin concept authored by Satoshi Nakamoto
Launch of Spotify in Sweden
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
The Dark Knight
Wall-E
Slumdog Millionaire
In Bruges
Beyonce, I Am.. Sasha Fierce
Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
Lady Gaga, The Fame
Life Lessons
Social advancement is an impossibility, unless you’re willing to sacrifice your conscience, your identity and the lives of all your family. Rough.
Score
9
One of the most straightforwardly enjoyable Booker winners to date, despite it’s serious and heavy-hitting central themes.
Ranking to date:
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) - 9.5
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (1981) - 9.5
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee (1999) - 9.5
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004) - 9
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively (1987) - 9
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (2008) - 9
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth (1992) - 9
Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey (1988) - 9
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Life & Times of Michael K. - J. M. Coetzee (1983) - 9
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997) - 9
Schindler’s Ark - Thomas Keneally (1982) - 9
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai (2006) - 9
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2002) - 8.5
The Bone People - Keri Hulme (1985) - 8.5
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994) - 8.5
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2000) - 8
Possession - A. S. Byatt (1990) - 8
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Sea - John Banville (2005) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (2003) - 7.5
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992) - 7.5
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980) - 7.5
The Gathering - Anne Enright (2007) - 7.5
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2001) - 7.5
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
Last Orders - Graham Swift (1996) - 7
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle (1993) - 6
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (1991) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
The Ghost Road** - Pat Barker (1995) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998) - 5
Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner (1984) - 4.5
The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (1986) - 4
*Read in later condensed edition.
**Third part of a trilogy of which I hadn’t read pts 1&2
Next up
It’s the first of two doorstops from Hilary Mantel! Wolf Hall, here I come. See you in… maybe a bit longer than usual….
