This book reminds me of some of the novels from the U.S. civil rights movement, like Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown and Ralph Elison's Invisible Man. It has a similar visceral anger about injustice and inequality. It also reminds me of American mid-20th century anti-war novels, like Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, satirizing bureaucracy, policies, and the absurdities of society with dark humor a short step away from depair. The White Tiger is set in a different time (the early 21st century) and place (India) but the combination of comedy and vast outrage at the horrors of the world is remarkably similar. And Aravind Adiga's voice and the character he created is astoundingly original.

Here we are introduced to our antihero, Balram Halwai, and his path from rags to riches--via his own wits, ruthlessness, violence, corruption, murder, selfishness, blackmail, and occasional decency in an amoral, chaotic world. It's a cynical, irreverant, mordant, powerful, and creative look at the social order in a rapidly changing country.

The White Tiger is a fast read, but not an easy one--Adiga creates sympathy for a compelling, provocative, charming, and rather monstrous narrator. It's hard to say whether the story is hopeful or not; it depicts an unromanticized India. The author insists that it isn't "alternative" but absolutely mainstream: it's fiction, yes, but fiction built on reality, real places, real people, real diseases, real tensions regarding loyalty, morality, and individuality. As Andrew Holgate stated in his review for The Sunday Times, "there's not a sniff of saffron or a swirl of sari anywhere." It seems a good corrective, in any case.

NOVEL: The White Tiger

AUTHOR: Aravind Adiga

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2008

IMAGE: book cover, Free Press