1st Time Novelist wins 2008 Man Booker Prize
![Cover: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga](http://covers.librarything.com/devkey/3451304af6009f86404061385db840f8/large/isbn/1416562591)
Indian writer Aravind Adiga's first novel,
The White Tiger, was announced the winner of the
2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.
The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.
from: Man Booker Prize web site
The White Tiger was one of six shortlisted titles for the prize. Also shortlisted for this year's prize were:
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz