Page 157 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Unit 19: Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger—Critical Appreciation

helpful explanatory aside to digressions into political polemic. (…) One might note the Notes
distinctive narrative voice, rich with the disconcerting smell of coarse authenticity. It is
simultaneously able to convey the seemingly congenital servility of the language of the rural
poor as well as its potential for knowing subversion. It sends up the neo-Thatcherite vocabulary
of the new rich, their absurd extravagance and gaudy taste, but manages to do it tenderly
and with understanding. (…) Adiga’s style calls to mind the work of Munshi Premchand,
that great Hindi prose stylist and chronicler of the nationalist movement”
• “Adiga’s message isn’t subtle or novel, but Balram’s appealingly sardonic voice and acute
observations of the social order are both winning and unsettling.”
• “At once a fascinating glimpse beneath the surface of an Indian economic “miracle,” a heart-
stopping psychological tale of a premeditated murder and its aftermath, and a meticulously
conceived allegory of the creative destruction that’s driving globalization. (...) That may
sound like a lot to take in, but The White Tiger is unpretentious and compulsively readable to
boot.”
• “In bare, unsentimental prose, he strips away the sheen of a self-congratulatory nation and
reveals instead a country where the social compact is being stretched to the breaking point.
There is much talk in this novel of revolution and insurrection: Balram even justifies his
employer’s murder as an act of class warfare. The White Tiger is a penetrating piece of social
commentary, attuned to the inequalities that persist despite India’s new prosperity. It correctly
identifies — and deflates — middle-class India’s collective euphoria. But Adiga, a former
correspondent for Time magazine who lives in Mumbai, is less successful as a novelist.”
• “His voice is engaging — caustic and funny, describing the many injustices of modern
Indian society with well-balanced humour and fury. But there’s little new here — the blurbs
claim it’s redressing the misguided and romantic Western view of India — but I suspect
there are few to whom India’s corruption will come as a surprise. As social commentary, it’s
disappointing, although as a novel it’s good fun.”
• “I found the book a tedious, unfunny slog (.....) The tone of the writing is breezy-absurd,
which means we can’t hold the writer accountable for anything that happens in the book. (...)
There’s no accountability in the breezy-absurd school of literature ! Everything goes ! Nothing
is real ! Lie back and open wide. (...) Echoes of the Indo-Internationalist club of literature can
be heard throughout.”
• “Adiga’s training as a journalist lends the immediacy of breaking news to his writing, but it
is his richly detailed storytelling that will captivate his audience. (...) The White Tiger contains
passages of startling beauty (...). Adiga never lets the precision of his language overshadow
the realities at hand: No matter how potent his language one never loses sight of the men
and women fighting impossible odds to survive. (...) The White Tiger succeeds as a book that
carefully balances fable and pure observation.”
• “Extraordinary and brilliant (….) Talk of “lessons” should not be taken to suggest that The
White Tiger is a didactic exercise in “issues”, like a newspaper column. For Adiga is a real
writer — that is to say, someone who forges an original voice and vision.”
• “What Adiga lifts the lid on is also inexorably true: not a single detail in this novel rings false
or feels confected. The White Tiger is an excoriating piece of work, stripping away the veneer
of ‘India Rising’. That it also manages to be suffused with mordant wit, modulating to clear-
eyed pathos, means Adiga is going places as a writer.”
• “It is certain of its mission, and pursues it with an undeviating determination you wouldn’t
expect in a first novel. It reads at a tremendous clip. Its caricatures are sharply and confidently

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