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.

At 33, he was the second youngest and third debut novelist to win the Booker prize and, since then, the novel has been optioned for a film and has been sold in 37 countries.

Meeting Adiga on a flying visit to London from his home in Mumbai, he seems somewhat indifferent to all the attention he is receiving.

“I’m told I made the worst-seller list, when Private Eye published the worst publishing decisions of the year – and The White Tiger was one of them,” he points out. “It’s great to win, and it changes your fortunes dramatically for the better and for the worse.”

The negative side is that all the publicity it generates, plus the demands on your time, make it difficult to get down to writing the next book.

Between The Assassinations is a collection of short, overlapping stories set in the fictional small Indian city of Kittur, which is like the town in which he grew up, he explains.

The stories feature an eclectic mix of characters, from a middle-aged Communist to an Islamic terrorist, an idealistic journalist and an alienated schoolboy. The book shows a microcosm of Indian life in the 1980s, the rifts between high-caste and low-caste, Muslim, Christian and Hindu.

Once again, he exposes the weaknesses of his country in his books, but he remains optimistic about India’s future and has no plans to move just yet.

“Things will get better. Young people are open to ideas and are confident that there will be prosperity.”

Perhaps Adiga shouldn’t complain too much about the downsides of such popularity. After all, the £50,000 prize money, royalties from sales and huge publicity the award has generated should ensure he remains in book stores for some time to come.

“I gave it all away to the school in the town where I grew up. Oh, and I drank a lot of it,” he says.

The White Tiger was optioned for a film adaptation by distinguished Hollywood producer John Hart. If made, it would be a far cry from Slumdog Millionaire, which paints a romantic portrait of the rising India, in which anyone can be a millionaire.

“Slumdog Millionaire... just brought reality back to the screen and I think that’s great. But I didn’t think it was such a great film.

“My book was very different and much bleaker, in a way. But the two have combined to pick up the big debate about what’s happening within India and where the country is headed.”

Born in Madras, the son of a doctor, Adiga grew up in middle-class surroundings where servants were commonplace. After his mother died, the family moved to Sydney, Australia, where he had a miserable time, was bullied at school and treated like an outsider.

He later studied at Oxford University, and worked as a journalist for the Financial Times and then Time magazine, returning to Mumbai six years ago because he wanted to set his story in the city.

“I always wanted to go back. I can’t write about India without living there,” he said.