Legal Research

More White Tiger

By scott

And so the votes are in, and this years Booker prize winner was The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Now you’ll have to hold on a bit longer until the combined wisdom of Scott & Jen pass their judgment on the Information Overlord winner, but congratulations to Aravind Adiga.

Now those who read my last post and review of The White Tiger will probably have guessed that it probably isn’t going to get my vote in our assessment of the books. I would, however, like to repeat that I enjoyed reading it, and there are a lot of good things in the book. Chair of the Judges Michael Portillo liked it a lot and said: “The novel is in many ways perfect. It is quite difficult to find any structural flaws with it …My criteria were ‘Does it knock my socks off?’ and this one did … the others impressed me … this one knocked my socks off.” Portillo continued saying what set the book apart was its originality in showing “the dark side of India”.

Do the judges of these things not actually read or do research? I think the book shows “the dark side of India” very well in part, but originality? Try reading Vikram Chandra, or Sujit Saraf. There are Indian writers out there who have been doing this before. Yes, Adiga does it very well in sections of this book, but he isn’t the trail-blazer some reviewers/judges would have you believe. Also Michael, leaving aside structure - and we could discuss whether or not knowing he is a murderer at the start is a good or bad plot device - what about characterisation flaws? Pick a few characters at random: The Mongoose, Ashok, The Stork, and tell me who they are. If I gave you extracts of text about them would you be able to recognise them? I seriously doubt it.

Of course, Jen might tell me I’m talking bollocks, that the characterisation is good and agree that this is indeed the worthy winner of the prize.

Full post as published by Information Overload on October 15, 2008 (boomark / email).