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Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

Satirical and hilarious... January 5, 2009
This book is an awesome tome on the hypocritical social mores prevalent in India. It is a rude awakening...though hilarious. At some points it is a melancholic reminder of the moral depravation of the Indian society. The author wants to shake (not nudge) Indians out of their malaise and reprive. Hope more Indians read this book and soul search...

4 out of 5 stars

An Indian Crime and Punishment Done with Tongue-in-Cheek Humor December 8, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Is this novel bitter, acid, sardonic, mocking, disillusioned, scornful, disrespectful, satirical, witty, or ironic? It displays, by turns, all of those qualities. The narrator's style perfectly captures the way that my Indian friends describe how government and personal privilege work in that country. While reading, I felt like I was sitting across from one of them having a cup of tea in a friendly Indian restaurant, and that reaction made me smile.

From this element, a false note creeps into this book. The people I know who express such views are highly educated Indians who have spent a lot of time outside of India. To make the book work, however, we have to believe that the writer is intelligent but has little education and experience outside of being a servant and driver.

Why did this debut novel win the prestigious Man Booker prize? I can only attribute the basis for that award to the obvious allusions to Crime and Punishment as Aravind Adiga explores how an impoverished Indian develops the consciousness to perform a great crime in a memoir-style novel filled with unrestrained humor. I've certainly read more humorous books by Indian authors in recent years.

As the book opens, we read a letter addressed "For the Desk of: His Excellency Wen Jiabao, The Premier's Office, Beijing, Capital of the Freedom-loving Nation of China From the Desk of: 'The White Tiger,' A Thinking Man, And an Entrepreneur, Living in the world's center of Technology and Outsourcing, Electronics City Phase I (just off Hosur Main Road, Bangalore, India." It begins, "Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English." The epistle is sent off in responses to the news that the premier is scheduled to arrive in Bangalore the following week. The White Tiger has been told on the radio that the premier wants to learn the truth about Bangalore, and the White Tiger is willing to fill him in.

As you will quickly spot in the first few pages, China and India come in for their fair share of satire in this work as well . . . providing contextual humor to keep the book from becoming too serious in its focus on India and its corrupt democracy that pretends to offer more.

The nightly letters continue for a week as The White Tiger (aka Balram Halwai) explains how he became an entrepreneur and how he conducts his business. If the humor starts to weigh on you, stick with it. The final part expresses a view that the new entrepreneurial class can choose to behave better than the old ownership class did. It's that hope that makes this book rise above the kind of satire that we all enjoy in newspaper columns about government corruption.

The book's great strength is that Mr. Adiga is able to pull together so many different aspects of Indian society into one novel. It's an imaginative concept backed up by solid writing underpinned by deep insight into this complex and interesting nation that presents so many apparent contradictions to those who aren't Indian.

One of the things I liked a lot about the book is that I could imagine The White Tiger living in Washington, D.C. and talking about the politicians there. That thought added a lot to my delight.

Have fun!

4 out of 5 stars

Sardonic Tale of India December 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

In contrast to the main character of The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga received an extensive education from some of the best institutions available-Columbia undergrad and then Oxford. In his book, however, Balram Halwai, the White Tiger or sweet maker, grows up with a very minimal education, scratching by barely with the ability to read in a system designed, it seems to keep one ignorant rather than to educate. In fact the whole system of castes in India, in modern day India, through the eyes of Balram, tends to rigidly, forcefully and cruelly keep one either in the category of servant and poverty or of the privileged and well-off. To a minimal extent Balram bucks the system and rises above his father and becomes a driver for a wealthy family. Even the wealthy, however, must maintain their businesses and position through a corrupt system of bribes to politicians who stay in power through a democracy that disenfranchises certainly the poor and perhaps others as well.
The book is written well with energy and a steady string of either interesting or amusing anectdotes as Balram progresses from "the darkness" or poor, rural India to Delhi which appears as a city in a state of rapid but chaotic modernization where buildings are rising steadily for either malls or job centers for outsourced work from countries like the US. Again the inequities abound for Balram,the driver, and those like him, and the superior castes appear anything but. The book is fast-paced and entertaining.

4 out of 5 stars

India like it is December 3, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Just like the letter to the Chinese premier (?) this book really provides an eye-opener to India. Personally, having recently moved to Bangalore from Canada, I can identify with the author's 'outsider view' to the grim reality of India today - perhaps people living in India have become desensitized to the mess. Hopefully this book will make people rethink of the so-called progress.
About the writing and plot - very engaging in the first half, but could seem to sustain it to the end.

5 out of 5 stars

Living in a Decadent Society November 21, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful

"The White Tiger" is this year's latest recipient of the Man Booker Prize for the best novel of the year. While the judges don't always get it right when selecting for this award, I think they made a fair choice this time. The story oozes with a sense of what it must be like for a young person growing up in a modern Indian village with no familial support or economic means to make it in life. The main character is an intelligent and literate young man named Balram, who was born an outcast but has miraculously risen to become a richman's driver in the capital city of Dehli. Upon hearing a radio broadcast of his Prime Minister telling his Chinese counterpart that India is a very civilized and virtuous society, he decides to do the unthinkable and write the Chinese premier and tell the real side of the story. What the reader gets here is the rough and rude reality of what it means for many Indian children growing up in an irrational environment that uses and abuses them for criminal and sexual purposes. While the government has banned the caste system, where people are perpetually assigned to hold menial jobs, it still flourishes in all parts of Indian life. "White Tiger", the name given the young boy while at school, becomes his moniker as he makes his way into the nefarious world of corrupt officials and crime bosses. Because he is literate, he has become groomed to be a driver and lackey for a rich family in Delhi. While some might see this as a step-up in terms of ascending the social ladder of Indian society, it is anything but. Balram becomes quickly acquainted with, and be expected to handle, the nastiest of situations that involve murder, cheating, bribery, and stealing. It is from behind the wheel of a Honda Civic that this keenly intelligent young man tells this engrossing story as he wends his way from place to place in the big city, doing his masters's bidding. His fellow chauffeurs, meanwhile, are simply pawns who are not aware of the role they play in the bigger picture. They are the helpless ones who are being exploited by a very unjust and dishonorable society intent on making them its doormat. The reality of all this is that even the virtuous like Balram need to stoop to conquer. We find him gradually getting sucked into the routine of committing the odd venial misdeed in order not to be ostracized by his fellow drivers. If anything, this book is really a profound study of how corrupt practices can destroy good intentions in any society.

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