2008 Booker Prize: The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga just became the third debut novelist (and the first of the three not to include the word "God" in his or her title) to win the Man Booker Prize, for The White Tiger. (He's also the second winner to be younger than me at the time of the award, but who's counting...). The bookies (or, rather, the betting action their odds reflect) are right about the Booker about as often as they are about the Kentucky Derby, and once again the favorite (Sebastian Barry for The Secret Scripture) went home empty. Also among the disappointed was Philip Hensher for The Northern Clemency, which Knopf has moved up to a November pub date in the US, and which I am loving, but now at least when I champion it I won't just look like a Booker bandwagoneer.
The Booker judges said, "In the end, The White Tiger prevailed because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure. The novel undertakes the extraordinarily difficult task of gaining and holding the reader's sympathy for a thoroughgoing villain. The book gains from dealing with pressing social issues and significant global developments with astonishing humour." If you're looking for some more graceful praise than that, the Literary Saloon has linked to more than a dozen reviews, mostly raves, although its own review only came out to a B-. The Economist called Adiga "the Charles Dickens of the call-centre generation" and his villainous hero, Balram Halwai, reminded the Independent on Sunday "of the endless talkers that populate the novels of the great Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal," but in the Washington Post, Tony D'Souza heard the echoes instead of "the pop and fluff of The Nanny Diaries irony." The book has also gathered 19 customer reviews on our site, almost all of them glowing, since it came out in the States in April. A new paperback edition, moved up in time for the announcement, was released today: a nice bet by the Free Press, although now they are going to have to update the little sticker that says "Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize." I used the cover image for the original hardcover above, though, because I think it's one of the loveliest of the year. --Tom
Laura M. Delnick on October 15, 2008 at 11:24 AM
Thanks for the very informative blog. It made me want to read the book.
Seth Davidson on October 15, 2008 at 11:42 AM
This sounds like an interesting book. Anyone compared to Charles Dickens gets my attention, as I'm about halfway through the Pickwick Papers, which I first ready twenty years ago or longer. Is Adiga really that funny? If so, I'll give it a read.