So here we are reading the Man Booker winner 2008

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

In a nutshell : Balram Halwai is from a village in the center of India, where the local elections are rigged, the local landowners are corrupt and thieving and where the water buffalo is more valuable than most people. We follow his life, leaving the village to become a driver for a rich family in Delhi.

The blurb : the book is written as a long letter from Balram to the Prime Minister of China, in which our hero describes the trials and tribulations of his life as an example of Inidan entrepreneurship. The book is clearly written in a cynical tone that suits the narrator's opinions and early on we realise that the character has a very dark -murderous- side to him. All in all this is a story of a modern Indian, squeezed between a modern India of call centers and money, and a traditionnal one of castes and corruption. The character, with characteristic cynicism and philosophising, muses on how one finds his place in this.

IMHO this was extremely disappointing for a MB winner. Not a bad book, but neither (again IMHO) "a masterpiece" and certainly not "blazingly savage". If anything it reminded me of a slightly darker Transmission by Hari Kunzru. One reviewer raved about the contrast between the "Indias", "where call center workers tread the same pavement as beggars" and though this is interesting it is not anywhere like in the same league as Rohinton Mistry. It was quite gripping at first but then seems to bumble along a bit. Nothing is predicatble, but mainly because not a lot happens. Some good descriptions and an interesting central character but somehow disappointing.