When "Renaissance Man" Michael Portillo became Chairman of the Man Booker Prize committee last year, I had expectations that the 2008 winning novel might just be rather more interesting than the usual stable of winners, and in the "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga I have not been disappointed.
The fact that the choice of this first-time novel clearly upset the sensibilities of a few white middle class journalists of "The Guardian" genre only added to its appeal. For whilst India may be "The Great Brown* Hope" of many in the West, I remind convinced that a combination of democracy and good quality urban planning are the high watermarks of civilisation and development, and, arguably, this combination can only be found in parts of Northern and Western Europe : I stress parts !
Returning to "The White Tiger", whilst this is very much a "fusion" novel, I don't think that its author should be called an "outsider" in his own country (as one Guardian reviewer did), as he was born in Madras and currently lives in Mumbai (or Bombay as they still call it there). However, Mr Adiga - still only in his mid-thirties - is undoubtedly a man of this world (he has travelled widely) and of literature.
Thus "The White Tiger" owes its bite not just to an extraordinarily vivid account of modern India, but also to a much wider literary heritage. Nevertheless, whilst Aravind Adiga has been compared to both the Victorian Charles Dickens and the modern American writer Tom Wolfe, we should also look to Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" for both narrative style and points of reference.
Indeed, a memorable episode involves the narrator - and driver/servant- of an Americanised Asian living in Delhi, taking his boss and a corrupt Indian government official to a blond Russian prostitute who speaks a modest amount of Hindi and looks like the Hollywood actress Kim Bassinger. Later, when the narrator seeks out a similar "blond" for himself, he discovers she is a Ukrainian with dyed hair whose circumstances are even more desperate than his own.
Although the hero ultimately triumphs over adversity - through a brutal and criminal act - and sets up a successful enterprise in Bangalore on the back of the city's world-renowned technology/call-centre "cluster", both he and we are left to wonder whether democracy really has a future in India, or whether the country's profound socio-economic failings have sunk it into the irredeemable terriory of pre-Soviet Russia, or China before the coming of communism.
The following passage from towards the end of the book may remind readers of "news management" and international pre-occupations closer to home, including those of our former and current prime ministers :
"The health minister today announced a plan to eliminate malaria in Bangalore by the end of the year...
....In other news, the chief minister of state announced a plan to eliminate malnutrition in Bangalore in six months. He declared that there would be not one hungry child in the city by the end of the year..."
However, the narrator addresses himself not to the Good and Great of the West, but throughout his story, to "His Excellency Wen Jiabao, The Premier's Office, Beijing, Capital of the Freedom-Loving Nation of China", or "Our Great Yellow* Hope".
*The term's "brown" and "yelllow" are used here as they by the narrator of "The White Tiger".
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