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The White Tiger: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $12.00
You Save: $12.00 (50%)
New (37) from $12.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 19305
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 1416562591
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9781416562597
ASIN: 1416562591
Publication Date: April 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
Introducing a major literary talent, The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has yet seen.Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along. Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive. Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations. Sold in sixteen countries around the world, The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation -- and a startling, provocative debut.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Dear Mr Premier, there are some things about India you should know... July 1, 2008
This is Balram Halwai's story written as an ongoing letter to the Premier of China to advise him about the real India; the one he probably won't see on his forthcoming visit. In fact, it is Balram's own story of how he overcame poverty and became an `entrepreneur'. If this sounds like a story of poor boy does well, forget it. This is a story of dog eat dog, "straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere". It's very funny, yet as you laugh, you realise there is more truth than fiction although you're left wondering how much.
Called "Munna" (boy) by his parents, his father a rickshaw-puller and his mother ill and dying, he is given the name Balram on his first day of school. Learning how to fend for himself became Balram's best education; listening and eavesdropping on others taught him the rest. Working in a tea room, and then managing to become a taxi-driver and from there chauffeur, he kept his ear to the ground, listened, learned, manipulated and schemed. From small village to seething city of Delhi, Balram yearns to escape the yoke of `nobody'. From his nickname "White Tiger", he starts to realise just how long he and those like him have been captives of India's political system. How will it ever be possible for him escape the cage of poverty? All the other chauffeurs with whom he associates spend their time reading Murder Weekly; will the White Tiger have to resort to this level, or will blood be spilt and the cage doors open? All is revealed as Balram continues writing to the Chinese Premier. This is a book you won't forget in a hurry.
Ehalivan 2 June 30, 2008
I am a product of Indian subcontinent. When I was young, I learned Mahabarata, Ramayana and other stories from Tamil Nadu. Throughout, Indian history, the rulers of the continent at any time didn't have the ability to recognize the "White Tigers" among them. Ehalivan from Mahabarata comes to mind and in the South, Nanthanar's story is another example of a "White Tiger". Aravind Adiga's "White Tiger" is a powerful novel and it highlights the main weakness of an otherwise creative civilization. Well done, Mr. Aravind Adiga!
Four Thumbs Up June 7, 2008
Hilarious, moving, smart, captivating. Like other reviewers here, I read slowly, hoping it wouldn't end.
My favorite quality: the consistent smartness and edginess in each line. It's hard to write a comic novel that's funny from start to finish, but Adiga succeeds. Incredibly, it's also social commentary.
A Voice Like Dave Eggers May 30, 2008
Great fiction writing is like acting and directing at the same time. The novelist needs to create believable personalities, original voices, and plot. The character that Adiga created here, Balram the servant cum businessman, speaks in an original voice that sounds lyrical, devilish, believable.
On the surface, the novel is a 250+ page letter from Balram to a visiting Chinese diplomat. On the micro-level of words and sentences, Adiga comes up with original character development that convinces the reader we have blood and flesh. Yet it's fiction. The story is a study in character, and character development seems to be Adiga's main strength. The story's plot and setting rests on Adiga's firm background as a journalist covering India for Time magazine. Adiga is familiar with both the poor and new India, and in the novel he contrasts the two societies to great effect. In the end, it's the conflict between these two societies that is the crux of the story: "Dark" and "Light" India are constantly at war, yet the two extremes also seem to share certain values. In the novel, both the rich and the poor are corrupt, resort to bribery, sleep with prostitutes, cheat, lie, steal -- and even murder -- to get to the top. In the end, this comparing and contrasting of values is what this book is about.
As an aid to character development, Adiga gives animal nicknames to the rich landlords that serve as supporting characters. Given that the poor in India tend to be illiterate and relate to people and things according to their environment more than through academic means, animal nicknames seemed like an ingenious character development ploy. The novel is filled with little elements like this that work well.
At the end of the novel (after Balram kills his master and becomes the narrating entrepreneur of the story) the plot tends to wrap up rather quickly (I will not give it away here); however, although it wraps up quickly, it is a satisfying ending because it completes the theme of the book, which is the contrast and similarities in values between the rich and poor in India.
 Caught in the rooster coop May 27, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In his debut novel, Aravind Adiga takes on some hefty issues: the unhappy division of social classes into haves and have-nots, the cultural imperialism of the First World, the powder-kegged anger that seethes among the world's dispossessed, and entrapment. But his skills as an author protect the novel from becoming one of those horrible didactic stories in which characters and plot are little more than mouthpieces and vehicle for delivering Great Truths. The White Tiger entertains and gives pause for thought. This is a good combination.
The plot centers around Balram Halwai, a laborer born and raised in a small village utterly controlled by crooked and feudally powerful landlords. The village is located in 'the Darkness,' a particularly backward region of India. Balram is eventually taken to Delhi as a driver for one of the landlord's westernized sons, Ashok. It's in Delhi that Balram comes to the realization that there's a new caste system at work in both India and the world, and it has only two groups: those who are eaten, and those who eat, prey and predators. Balram decides he wants to be an eater, someone with a big belly, and the novel tracks the way in which this ambition plays out.
A key metaphor in the novel is the rooster coop. Balram recognizes that those who are eaten are trapped inside a small and closed cage--the rooster coop--that limits their opportunities. Even worse, they begin to internalize the limitations and indignities of the coop, so that after awhile they're unable to imagine they deserve any other world than the cramped one in which they exist. Balram's dream is to break free of his coop, to shed his feathers and become what for him is a symbol of individualism, power, and freedom: a white tiger. But as he discovers, white tigers have their own cages, too.
Of course, it's not simply the Balram's of the world caught in the rooster coop. Adiga's point seems to be that even the world's most privileged suffer from a cultural and class myopia that limits perspective and distorts self-understanding. The White Tiger is a good tonic with which to clear one's vision and spread one's wings.
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