Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend-the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. Adiga’s pacing is off too, as Balram too quickly reinvents himself in Bangalore, where every cop can be bought.Īn undisciplined debut, but one with plenty of vitality.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Thus he writes persuasively about the so-called Rooster Coop, which traps family-oriented Indians into submissiveness, but fails to describe the stages by which Balram evolves from solicitous servant into cold-blooded killer. Adiga, who was born in India in 1974, writes forcefully about a corrupt culture unfortunately, his commentary on all things Indian comes at the expense of narrative suspense and character development. His business (coal trading) involves bribing government officials with huge sums of money, the sight of which proves irresistible to Balram and seals Ashok’s fate. Ashok is a gentleman, a decent employer, though Balram will eventually cut his throat (an early revelation). Ashok, lives with his Westernized wife, Pinky Madam. Balram is on his way, to Delhi in fact, where the Stork’s son, Mr. Soon after, he’s pulled out of school to work in a tea shop, then manages to get hired as a driver by the Stork, one of the village’s powerful landlords. But Balram is smart, as a school inspector notices, and he is given the moniker White Tiger. Like the huddled masses, he was born in the Darkness, in a village where his father, a rickshaw puller, died of tuberculosis. Balram sees India as two countries: the Light and the Darkness.
China’s Premier is set to visit, and the novel’s frame is a series of Balram’s letters to the Premier, in which he tells his life story.
What makes an entrepreneur in today’s India? Bribes and murder, says this fiercely satirical first novel.īalram Halwai is a thriving young entrepreneur in Bangalore, India’s high-tech capital.
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