The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is another angry-young man novel, similar in concept (if not in realisation) to Cockroach by 

Rawi Hage. However, there are two principal differences that set this novel apart from the uniformly hostile offering by Hage.

The narrator of White Tiger, Balram Halwai, tells his story with a voice that ranges from murderous rage to sunny optimism,

infused with a delightfully black sense of humour that lifts the tale out of its moribund details. In complement, the setting of the

novel, modern India with all its warts and exotic mysteries and social complexities, is portrayed in vivid and philosophical detail,

brought to life as a character in itself, becoming the antagonist to the narrator, a well-spring of contempt and devotion and

ultimate success. While the narrator's voice did not seem completely consistent throughout the novel, and his 'growth' as a man

is convenient and morally suspect, the triumph of the novel is its exploration of the India as experienced by the servant caste, 

its overriding thesis that the common man is kept in place by social convention, corruption and familial devotion, accompanied 

by a justified fear of reprisal.