Booker Prize Winner

Aravind Adiga was named the winner of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2008 for his debut novel The White Tiger. The winning novel is described as a ‘compelling, angry and darkly humorous' novel about a man's journey from Indian village life to entrepreneurial success. It was described by one reviewer as an ‘unadorned portrait' of India seen ‘from the bottom of the heap'. One of the Booker judges, Michael Portillo, explained that the novel had won overall because of 'its originality'. He said that The White Tiger presented 'a different aspect of India' and was a novel with 'enormous literary merit'. Balram Halwai is the White Tiger – the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi where he takes the violent action that secures his place among the rich.