The White Tiger

The Age

Saturday May 3, 2008

Cameron Woodhead

The White Tiger

Aravind Adiga Atlantic Books, $32.95

THROUGH A SERIES OF letters written to the visiting Chinese premier, Balram Halwai tells a tale of two Indias. The first he calls the Darkness - the life of back-breaking rural poverty whence he came. The second is the entrepreneurial India, a land of opportunity that Balram would willingly sell his grandmother, not to mention a sacred cow or two, to join. The wily and amoral narrator succeeds in embracing material success but at a terrible price. Aravind Adiga has created a mordant, self-lacerating protagonist who, apart from being very funny, is a vehicle for sharp observations about the cultures and foibles of haves and have-nots on the subcontinent. It's a picture that, for all its riot and humour, emerges as grotesque, with more than a splash of the Dickensian about it. But this should be no surprise - Victorian Britain and contemporary India have much in common.

© 2008 The Age

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