Author: Aravind Adiga
Translator(s)/ Editors(s): Manohar Notani
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2010
Language: Hindi
Pages: 277
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788172238698
Description
Meet Balram Halwai, the 'White Tiger': servant, philosopher, entrepreneur, murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells his story.
Born in a village in the dark heart of India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coal and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking way from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose murky depth have seeped the remains of a hundred generation.
His bit chance comes when a rich village landlord hires him as a chauffeur for his son, daughter-in-law and their two Pomeranian dogs. From behind the wheels of a Honda, Balram first sees Delhi. The city is a revelation. Amid the cockroaches and call centers, the 36,000,004 gods, the slums, the shopping malls and the crippling traffic jams, Balram's reeducation begins. Caught between his instinct to be a loyal son and servant, and his desire to better himself, he learns of a new morality at the heart of a new India. As the other servants flick through the pages of Murder Weekly, Balram begins to see how the Tiger might escape his cage. For surely any successful man must spill a little blood on his way to the top?
The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. Balram's journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.
COMMENTS :
With remorselessly and delightfully mordant wit, The White Tiger anatomizes the fantastic cravings of the rich; it evokes, too, with startling accuracy and tenderness, the no less desperate struggles of the deprived.
-Pankaj Mishra
Unlike almost any other Indian novel you might have read in recent years, this page-turner offers a completely bald, angry, unadorned portrait of the country as seen from the bottom of the heap; there is not a sniff of saffron or a whirl of sari anywhere. The Indian tourist board won't be pleased, but you will read it in a trice and find yourself gripped.
- Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times
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