by Yankee Rose
Aravind Adiga is an Indian born, American and British educated journalist who has written for Financial Times, Money, Time and The New Yorker, although that list is far from exhaustive. His first published novel, The White Tiger, took the literary world by storm by winning the 2008 Booker Prize and achieving distribution in sixteen countries. The White Tiger has a simple enough concept, the story of a poor small town boy making something of himself in the big city. What makes this book so remarkable is not the story, but the fantastic prose tangled with soft undercurrents that force the reader to think.
Adiga uses the tension between China and India as the setting to the book, with his narrator telling the story in the form of a series of letters to China’s Prime Minister. His characters explore the change from a caste system to a class system, a transition that allows him to describe India’s poverty in harrowing detail. Below the central theme of the caste system, Adiga touches on the religious struggles of Indian Muslims, the modern day slave trade resulting from families being unable to feed their children, the healthcare disparities that we cannot imagine as Americans, and the lack of free journalism. Somehow, a light fiction read is converted into a captivating introductory course in modern Indian culture.
Adiga tells this tale in a way that keeps bringing the reader from Bangalore and Delhi back to rural India. Moving between the two worlds, “into the darkness” as Adiga says, is a jarring reminder of how democracy has failed India. Elections are bought, people are uneducated, and familial obligations and expectations make upward mobility impossible. It is despite these challenges that our narrator is able to escape the abject poverty he was raised in. Although the steps he had to take to achieve success were often malevolent, I found myself cheering for him the whole way.
This book was an intriguing read that left me with so many real questions. How could Asia’s largest democracy fail 500 million people by leaving them in debasing poverty? How can the India that most Americans think of, the one where anyone can go to school and become a technology expert, a doctor, or an entrepreneur, be such a small part of the real India? Why is it so easy for us to turn a blind eye to India, even as we are addressing human rights violations in other Asian countries?
The White Tiger was an excellently written, provocative, compelling read. I would recommend it hands down to any fan of truly good fiction.
Just in case you need one more reason to crack the cover, Bound To Be Read Books will be discussing it Thursday evening, August 20, at 7:00pm. Read the book. Come to book club. Share your thoughts.
by Gunter Grass. All are welcome.
