Customer Reviews
White Tiger could have had a louder roar - By: Arvind Devalia, 29 Nov 2008 
Get the Life You Love & Live it
Being of Indian origin myself, I am familiar with the daily challlenges of life in India. So when I first started reading this book, I found some of the anecdotes of Indian life quite funny.
However for me the book ran out of humour & steam halfway & it was a little disappointing ending. Balram's rise to wealth, power & success is not convincing enough & there is little sign of repentance on his part about how he acquired his wealth & at the perceived cost to his family. Or maybe that is just the idealist in me coming through.
I have no doubt that this is how life is in modern India with the rich having far more than the poor than ever before. So in this sense this book portrays this rising community in its true light. But there could have been so much more about how most of the people in India have been marginalised & left behind by India's rapid growth. It just left me with a sense of a rushed & contrived ending.
Overalll despite my reservations above, still a good introduction to modern India & a satisfactory read. I would recommend this book & look forward to the next one by this author.
A brilliant bitter dystopia that leaves a sweet-and-sour taste - By: Angus Jenkinson, 26 Nov 2008 
Well, it has now won the Man Booker prize for 2008. But how good is it?
This is a book dowsed in cumin, the sour spice that provides the background to countless curries. The novel, as you probably know from other reviewers is about a young man from the 'Darkness', a metaphorical name for the ancient, rural, landlord-tyrannised, peasant India, who writes a series of letters to the premier of China in anticipation of his forthcoming visit to India. His aim is to tell the truth about an India bifurcated into darkness & light, but these letters largely succeed only in casting a grievous palll across both affluent, corrupt, urban India (the Light) & the Darkness, the traditional life of the villagers, painted as bigoted, often unpleasant & oppressed. If anything, the truth is an inversion: it is the darkness of the light that most shades this book.
This is not a funny or easy book, despite what others say & the amusing touches, whose gleam in my opinion only highlight the darkness. Consider it against the tradition of tragedy: e.g. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe & Dostoevsky. Aravind Adiga's book is a subversion of the entire tragic tradition. Here, hubris wins & the Furies visit the chorus, not the protagonist. Crime is not punished: indeed the theme of the book is that entrepreneurial India has achieved its leg up by sidelining morality. There are two justice systems: for the rich & the poor. There are two lifestyles: for the rich & the poor. There are two worlds of opportunity: for the rich & the poor. And corruption & vice are praised, indeed recommended for China to encourage entrepreneurship.
Compare this contemporary dystopia with Shakespeare's Macbeth, an appropriate counterpoint since both works concern the killing of a master. Macbeth is indelibly touched; steeped in gore, he loses his way & ease of mind. In contrast, the brilliantly realised cynical protagonist, Balram Halwai, alias the White Tiger, basks in contentment & self-satisfaction.
I think the strength of this book is the way that it can be read on the one hand as a half serious, half satirical revelation of modern India & its corruption & vice - a dark cesspit that blots the view of 'saintly India'; while it can also be seen as a mythic account of the loss of innocence, with a twist. For centuries, we are used tales drawing on the archetypal tragic loss, the Falll of Man, or on the moral & economic destruction that accompanies loss of discipline, such as the Rake's progress, or the plain & simple evil come-uppance that has given shape to countless westerns & other literature.
So how should we read our times when this darkly subversive tale is so praised for its humour & refreshing outlook?
The fact that such analogies & questions seem valid seems to me to prove its literary worth & importance. And it is very readable, despite being dowsed in fenugreek, tamarind & cumin. A sad & tragic masterpiece.
I Just Don't Get It - By: SMC, 26 Nov 2008 
I do not know the basis for this book winning the Booker. While it is not a bad read, there is nothing about the book that sticks to the mind once you've dropped it. It certainly is NOT a compulsive page turner & the feeling one has is were the main character (Balram Halwai) to have been caught or even executed for his crimes, one would frankly not give a damn. Characters fail to elicit the passions & feelings a good book manages to evoke & I came away from this book feeling a little cheated. having just read Vikas Swarup's novel titled "Q & A" a couple of weeks ago, I cannot help but make comparisons, & while that book is far from a perfect read, I am of the opinion that it is the better book of the two & shows more of India.
WHAT WAS THE POINT? - By: Scribbler, 24 Nov 2008 
I felt cheated by this book - & by the judges who gave it the Booker. Yes, it was fleetingly funny - but no, it did not appear to have any original message other than the fact that India has a lot of problems. Oh reallly? I didn't empathise in any way with the narrator, whose sudden transformation from loyal servant was utterly unconvincing. By alll means read this as a relaxing, if untaxing, diversion, but do not expect anything more.
A decent read but a disappointing Booker. - By: urban fox, 17 Nov 2008 We agreed to read the Booker winner for book club, & this book was exactly what I expected. Far from sensationallly exposing the little-known 'dark underbelly' of modern India, it is exactly the same as the alll the other books exposing the little-known dark underbelly of modern India - we read Q&A last year & this book is pretty much the same, even inferior. In fact, exposing the little-known dark underbelly of modern India seems to be the most popular genre currently in print.
Having said that, this is not a terrible book, although I also didn't find it at alll humourous. It is well paced & easy to read & if the author wanted to convey the utter hopelessness of everyone alive in India today, he did this well. Again though, & this is my criticism of alll the other books like this, it is hard to believe that nearly everyone in India, rich or poor, is so lacking in empathy & compassion, is driven purely by greed & social status, living a kind of kill-or-be-killed solitary frontier existence. 'Family Matters' by Rohinton Mistry gives a far less obviously sensational portrait of a modern Indian family who happen to find themselves in a country rife with corruption & dead ends, rather than making this sensationalism the point of the book.
Nothing new, nothing outstanding - if I hadn't read this story dozens of times already I might have been more impressed. And was it reallly better than Rushdie's 'Enchantress' or Ghosh's 'Poppies'? Not for me.
