It is two weeks since I read Aravind Adiga's Booker winning novel...when the book was released and I saw it at Book Selection Centre in Secunderabad, I wanted to buy it...it had received some 'interesting' reviews and moreover, he is my country cousin...from Mangalore, Karnataka...the same place where I hail from...and there is an 'Adiga' branch in our family and who knows, he could be related through some roundabout route...anyway, I thought I'd wait till the paperback is released...then Aravind got nominated...then shortlisted...and then he won...now, what to do? no more waiting for the paperback...I bought it the next day...and read it in two sittings...it is a page turner...a different kind of narrative...that means, a simple straightforward narrative...no styles and flourishes...no digressions...and it uses an kind of 'epistolary' style...though not the same as the one used in the early English novels...I don't want to describe the plot or characters here...I enjoyed reading the novel...
I wanted Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies to win the Booker...for me personally, Sea of Poppies is an infinitely better novel than The White Tiger...since I have read both novels, I also feel that The White Tiger is an important Indian novel to have come out at this point in time...it does offer some glee material for some critics...and some sulk material for Indian critics...last week's The Hindu's Literary Review on Sunday carried a longish article on The White Tiger saying essentially that the novel is 'inauthentic'... one doesn't want to start a debate or hold forth on 'authenticity' here...if I can use a cricket metaphor, this novel is a 'reverse swinging' ball...for the ball to reverse swing, the players have to keep one side shining and allow the other side to lose shine and colour... Adiga has tried to show the other side of the shining ball...to say that if only one side is kept shining, the ball has the capacity to reverse swing...
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