(8.5) This book is formatted in the style of a letter the Chinese Premier,Jiabao, who is shortly to visit India. The author of this letter Balram Halwai, considers himself a successful entreprneur having managed to raise himself out of the circumstances he was born into in a small rural village. He and his family were considered servants and Halwai through close observation of humanity gradually elevates himself by fear means and foul.
Wwith this method of presentation, the recipient of this letter and the reader are exposed to the underbelly of Indian life. It is related in a satirical manner, providing both humour and pathos.
It is his debut novel and won the Man Booker in 2008. ( )

"India adalah negara yang dicetak oleh para manusia setengah matang."

Sesuai dengan blurb, The White Tiger menceritakan tentang pria bernama Balram yang membunuh majikannya sendiri. Balram adalah seorang sopir yang sejak kecilnya putus sekolah hingga bekerja serabutan — menjadi pemukul batu bara, manusia laba-laba, dan pelayan di warung teh. Dia kemudian kursus menjadi sopir untuk kemudian bekerja bersama Ashok. Ashok sendiri sama-sama berasal dari desa kumuh yang sama dengan Balram, tetapi nasib mereka berbeda. Ashok begitu dihormati Balram sampai kemudian dia memutuskan menggorok majikannya sendiri.
Kisah Balram secara sekilas menarik karena menggambarkan kesenjangan sosial dan kondisi carut-marut India. Namun secara tersurat Aravind Adiga menuliskan kritik terhadap Islamofobia yang begitu kuat di India.
Secara blak-blakan, penulis mengatakan empat penyair terbaik di dunia adalah penyair Muslim. Lewat sudut pandang Balram, penulis mengatakan ada tiga penyair Muslim yang dia hormati di dunia, antara lain Rumi, Iqbal, dan Mirza Ghalib. Bahkan, Balram terngiang-ngiang syair salah satu dari mereka:

"Sudah bertahun-tahun kau mencari kuncinya / Padahal pintunya selalu terbuka!"

Aravind Adiga seakan-akan mengatakan secara halus bahwa kesalahan India sulit maju (saat bukunya ditulis) adalah karena mengesampingkan kaum Muslim di tanah mereka. Warga India masih saja bagaikan kaum tersesat yang membutuhkan keajaiban di depan mata untuk bisa bergerak maju, padahal keajaiban itu hadir dalam bentuk umat Muslim di sekitarnya.
Namun sesuai dengan babak akhir buku, tercerminlah bagaimana India akan terus bergerak: berusaha maju dengan konstruksi Islamofobia. ( )

A good companion piece to Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. ( )

The White Tiger, winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize, is a fantastic debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It's a seriously disturbing look at the great divide between the rich and the poor in modern India, and it's also darkly funny.

The hero (or anti-hero) of this novel is Balram Halwai, a man whose intelligence is wasted on the low circumstances of his birth. Though destined to be nothing more than a servant, Balram fights his way out of the darkness of rural India and into the light. How does he accomplish this feat? Well, he cuts his master's throat.

Engagingly written as a series of post-murder letters from Balram to the Premier of China, this book delights and horrifies in equal measure. Balram writes to the Chinese Premier so that the visiting dignitary will understand India the way that Balram does. Obviously, the reader is the one who comes away with a new appreciation of the world's second-most populous country.

If you were intrigued by the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire or enjoy darkly comic literary fiction, The White Tiger is the book for you. It is also available as an audiobook with an amazing performance by John Lee as Balram. ( )

I've actually been trying _not_ to read recently as I've had so many other things on and I didn't want to get drawn in as often happens. A sad state of affairs. Anyway, I received this for my birthday and so thought I would treat myself.

It's a really compelling book, with a great, complex charactor in Balram Halwai. It's an unusually - and refreshingly - excoriating attack on the corruption and, most of all, the massive class divides within modern India. It's a quite deliberate antitdote against the growing hype surrounding the nascent super-economy - and Adiga is not sugaring the pill. It was somewhat reminiscent of Vernon God Little - hugely enjoyable, with its likeable and down-trodden but unreliable narrator, who succeeds in drawing you into a well realised world view; but The White Tiger has a far more biting political edge, and delivers much more on its ambitions, than its fellow Booker winner.

The only real disappointment was that it didn't really address the culture of entrepeneurship in India, nor the emerging tech sector in Bangalore. They are promoted as central to the book from the very beginning, but it actually focuses much more on the huge cultural gaps and clashes between the very poor and the extremely rich, only touching on those themes in the last stages. Maybe, hoepfully, Adiga will turn the spotlight in that direction in his future work.
( )