A Tour of Contemporary India
Do you want to better understand the Mumbai siege? Would you like to increase your understanding of contemporary India? Have you wondered how this whole "outsourcing" thing has come to pass? Then pick up this page-turning Man Booker Prize winner.
The White Tiger is part A Confederacy of Dunces and part Life of Pi, with a touch of Machiavelli's The Prince and a little bit of Atlas Shrugged thrown in for good measure.
Our tale is dictated and recorded by the protagonist, Balram Halwai. Given no name but "boy" because his family worked too hard to think up a real name, Balram is the prototypical Indian entrepreneur.
Upon hearing on the radio that Mr. Jiabao, the Premier of China, will be visiting India to learn about the sub-continent's tremendous entrepreneurial spirit, Balram decides that, for the Premier's sake, he must intervene. Knowing that the official guides will give China's Premier a false account of what is happening in India, Balram takes it upon himself to record his own life story as a means toward understanding the true India.
Told as a collection of spoken recordings, made each night for a week in the wee hours of the morning and addressed directly to Mr. Jiabao, our Bangalore entrepreneur guides the reader, along with the Premier, through modern India as experienced by someone who started out among the poorest of the poor and wound up a wealthy man.
Inspired wit and ignorance, lust and greed, corruption and murder, reason and pride, cunning and madness, luck and careful planning. All play a role in this allegorical work.