Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life - possessive, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his foetus, but you know his corpse. Meet Balram Halwai, the 'White Tiger': servant, philosopher, entrepreneur... murderer. Balram was born in a backwater village on the River Ganges, the son of a rickshaw-puller. He works in a teashop, crushing coal and wiping tables, but nurses a dream of escape. When he learns that a rich village landlord needs a chauffeur, he takes his opportunity, and is soon on his way to Delhi at the wheel of a Honda. Amid cockroaches, call-centres, three-hundred-and-thirty-million gods, slums, shopping malls, and crippling traffic jams, Balram comes to see how the Tiger might escape his cage...

Author Biography

Aravind Adiga was born in Madras in 1974 and was India correspondent at Time magazine. The White Tiger, his debut novel, won the Man Booker Prize. Adiga has gone on to write Last Man in Tower and Between the Assassinations.