The White Tiger

The first thing that strikes you about "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga is the writing style. It reminded me of Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." The 'thinking aloud' approach adopted by Adiga is a highly effective tool and gets you involved with the character and the narrative in general.

Balram Halwai, a male servant coming from a poor background, is the protagonist of the book. How the city life corrupts him, like his master, and brings out his evil ambitions is the main theme of the novel. By inventing Balram Halwai, Adiga has managed to bring the dark side of India to the fore.

It's a well told story which manages to create the maximum impact with minimum characters! And with the Booker coming in, the maximum gain as well.

Disgrace - A Novel by a Great Novelist

I chanced upon a new novel recently. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee is a rather dark but mature novel set in post-apartheid South Africa. It deals with the changing social landscape in the country with a new beginning. By the time I finished reading the novel it was hard to decide for whom I felt more sorry - the father or the daughter. Coetzee style of writing is very appealing and impressive. Good enough to have won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003.

Disgrace itself won a Booker in 1999. In fact, in 2006, a poll of 'literary luminaries' by The Observer (UK) newspaper named it as the 'Greatest Novel of the Last 25 Years.'