Jason Chambers: The judges for the Man Booker and I are almost never on the same wavelength. I’ve read a lot of the winners and frequently find that I prefer something else on the short list far more than the winner. So it was with trepidation, along with a little annoyance that I declined to read the galley when it was offered to me in January, that I picked up The White Tiger.
The White Tiger is the assumed name of our protagonist Balram, born to the candymaker caste, ambitious chauffeur, loyal servent, traveller from the dark to the light, entrepreneur and murderer, and his epistolary tale is written over 9 nights to Chinese Premier Wen Jaibao, preceding his visit to India. Balram uses his personal history and insights to point out the strengths and weaknesses of modern Indian society. Along the way, he skewers family traditions, religion, government corruption, the rich and the poor.
Balram moves through Indian society, from a rare gifted child in a poor village, destined for an arranged marriage and abysmal living conditions, to driver for a rich family, where he bribes and threatens his way to a respected position just below the family dog. Finally escaping his predetermined role in society in a shocking scene, he also makes a transformation to a modern sensitivity, running his own business, and treating his employees not like servants to be abused and ridiculed, but as men deserving respect, and hopes that his country will follow.
I thought this was a good first novel, with lots of social satire and some poignant indictments of the gap between India’s wealthy and impoverished. However, I’m not sure it falls in my top 10 books of 2008, and it is half the book (both literally and figuratively) as the likewise Booker shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole.
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