The White Tiger: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

"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.

Balram Halwai is the narrator of this darkly comical view of life in contemporary India. The main theme of the novel is the stark contrast between the `Darkness' inhabited by the working class and the rural poor and the `Light' occupied by the wealthy, as India rises to be a modern global economy. There are other contrasts included: the religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims, as well as the tension for individuals between family loyalty and independence.

Balram's story comes to us via seven letters to the Chinese prime minister who, Balram has decided, should be told the truth about India before a forthcoming state visit. And Balram's form of truth, and his own part in India's transition, makes for interesting reading.

Balram lived in the village of Laxmangarh, deep in rural India. He's the son of a rickshaw puller, and is unable - because of his family's poverty - to finish school. Despite being clever, and being promised a scholarship, Balram is forced to work. One of his jobs involves wiping tables in a Dhanbad teashop. When Balram learns of the high salary paid to car drivers, he learns to drive and gets a lucky break when a rich man from his village (known as `The Stork') hires him as a chauffeur for his son, Ashok, who lives in New Delhi. Living in New Delhi is a revelation for Balram, who quickly becomes aware of immense wealth and opportunity around him, and of the great chasm between the wealthy and the poor. These experiences make Balram worldlier and more ambitious, and he wants to be part of this glamorous new India.

So, how does Balram make his own transition from the Darkness into the Light? By murdering his employer, and assuming a new identity.
`White men will be finished within my lifetime', he tells, us. `In my humble opinion, in twenty years' time, it will be just us yellow men and brown men at the top of the pyramid, and we'll rule the whole world.'

I admired this novel rather than enjoyed it. Some of the different worlds of India may well be accurately depicted, and they are neither comfortable nor pleasant. Of course, the setting is both important and irrelevant: important because it is the tension between the haves and the have-nots that underpin this story; irrelevant because those tensions occur in most (if not all) countries.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Was given this book by a member of my book club. It is a unique novel set in India and told in the perspective of an entrepreneur. I thoroughly enjoyed getting a glimpse of India - their struggles, their culture and the corruption at all levels of government. It was an eye-opening story with a compelling plot that kept me turning the pages.
Diana Young #1 Amazon best-selling author[...]