It's only fitting that the novel that (momentarily) pulled me out of my reading slump was one of the more underrated Booker Prize winners (2008). But who cares? I absolutely loved Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger." “The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”Prompted by the Chinese Premier’s visit to India, Balram Halwai decides to write a (very) long letter to the politician, in which he shares his success story. Early on, he confesses that he was an entrepreneur. “A...

No country or person in this world is perfect. Every nation and its people have flaws, and those flaws deserve scrutiny. I appreciate that Aravind Adiga, being Indian by birth, had the courage to criticize some of these issues in his book, The White Tiger. However, there's a significant difference between constructive criticism and outright condemnation. If you're a patriotic Indian, there's a good chance this book will deeply offend you. **The protagonist's sense of self-importance is absurd.*...

What an amazing translation by Suhail Najm! If we changed the names (cities and people) to Arabic names, no one would ever guess it's a translation of another text. (Some famous writers have done this, by the way, and were later exposed.) A truly masterful translation. *The White Tiger*... poverty speaks again, this time from India. A new kind, similar to our Arab poverty, but with its own characteristics due to the traditions of a society unlike ours. But the common thread remains present in e...

I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger," but it definitely wasn't this. The book is incredibly tongue-in-cheek, and I found myself completely sympathizing with the narrator, even at the very end. The idealistic part of me was a little horrified and upset by a lot of what happens, but I think it's pretty realistic and really made me think about the servant/master dynamic in a way I hadn't considered before. I'm torn about whether to rate "The White Tiger" f...

“The White Tiger” of Bangalore is cunning, fast, intrepid—the perfect symbol for this perfect novel that reminds the reader of characters like Scarface and company—antiheroes all. Aravind Adiga’s yarn is utterly engrossing; it's a mystery unraveled in the purest tradition of classic storytelling. It has that picaresque quality (which is one of the hardest tricks for a novelist to pull off, truly, really) needed to balance out all the heaviness of a constant train of melancholic events (violence ...

This review may contain spoilers. While I don't think it will ruin your reading experience, I'm adding this warning because a reader pointed it out.--------------------------------------Before I start, a warning to my patriotic Indian brothers and sisters... this is large-scale India-bashing. If you get worked up when India is criticized, this isn't for you.That said, Aravind Adiga bashes India where it needs it. No honest reader can deny his picture of India rings true. Most Indians awkwardly c...

The perfect companion piece to Slumdog Millionaire, and if you didn't like that movie, you won't like **The White Tiger** by Aravind Adiga for the same reasons. It's a no-nonsense, bulldozing, mordant, splenetic jackhammer of a story, written as a tough, slangy, 300-page fast-reading monologue. It's a novel of information, not art. It tells you all about modern India with a traditional rags-to-riches fable. Our hero murders his employer unapologetically, and that's how he gets his riches. This i...

'They remain slaves because they can’t see what is beautiful in this world.' That’s the truest thing anyone said…Even as a boy I could see what was beautiful in the world: I was destined not to stay a slave. *The White Tiger* by Aravind Adiga is a grim, biting, and unsubtle look at 21st-century India. It depicts a nation stuck in the mire of a corrupt, cynical past, debauching and slaughtering its way into a corrupt and cynical future. The story is told by a working-class fellow who, throug...

Stories about murderers and psychopaths are usually like cake for most of us (and I'm no exception). I either completely love or utterly hate those protagonists. But with Balaram, the protagonist in Aravind Adiga's *The White Tiger*, it's different. I felt nothing for him, even after reading 300 pages. I didn’t even hate him. I was completely indifferent, mainly because his character felt artificial and inconsistent. Every time I read cynical works or satire, I feel a bit more intelligent. But ...

Balram Halwai was raised in the Darkness -- the vast expanse of rural India where the impoverished far outnumber the wealthy, and where the right of the rich to oppress the poor is rarely challenged. Through his intelligence and ambition, he becomes the No. 2 driver for a local landlord nicknamed The Stork. When he discovers the No. 1 driver is concealing a secret, he manages to displace him and eventually move to Delhi with the landlord's Westernized son, Mr. Ashok, and his modern wife, Pinky ...