He is a smart child but is forced to leave school in order to help pay for his cousin's dowry and begins to work in a teashop with his brother in Dhanbad. In his letter, Balram explains how he, the son of a rickshaw puller, escaped a life of servitude to become a successful businessman, describing himself as an entrepreneur.īalram was born in a rural village in Gaya district, where he lived with his grandmother, parents, brother and extended family. Mirthless humorless weaklings as they are usually.' Plot summary īalram Halwai narrates his life in a letter, written in seven consecutive nights and addressed to the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. To catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India – the voice of the colossal underclass.' According to Adiga, the exigence for The White Tiger was to capture the unspoken voice of people from 'the Darkness' – the impoverished areas of rural India, and he 'wanted to do so without sentimentality or portraying them as Aravind Adiga, 33 at the time, was the second youngest writer as well as the fourth debut writer to win the prize. The novel has been well-received, making the New York Times bestseller list in addition to winning the Booker Prize. The novel examines issues of the Hindu religion, caste, loyalty, corruption and poverty in India.

The novel provides a darkly humorous perspective of India's class struggle in a globalized world as told through a retrospective narration from Balram Halwai, a village boy.

It was published in 2008 and won the 40th Booker Prize the same year. The White Tiger is a novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga.

Adiga aravind the white tiger 2008