Between The Assassinations

IT’S LESS than a year since Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize.

His debut novel The White Tiger, about an Indian driver turned entrepreneur who murders his way out of the gutter, attracted huge controversy when it came out in India and became a best-seller there long before it received acclaim here.

Like many tales of India, it reveals the great divide between the haves and the have-nots and paints a picture of two Indias: the bleak, soul-destroying poverty of village life, and the glittering prizes to be found in the big city.