The White Tiger tops Indie Top Ten
Man Booker 2008 winner holds top position
10 November 2008
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, winner of this year's Man Booker Prize, is top of the Independent Retailers book chart for the second week running.
Since winning the prize Aravind Adiga's novel has been praised by literary critics, academics and economists.
Shortly after the prize was awarded, The Daily Telegraph (16.10.2008) stated,
"Stories have always trumped statistics when it comes to getting a message across, and Adiga's novel, which his publishers reckon could sell 500,000 copies in Britain alone, has the power to encourage the world to take a more realistic view of modern India in all its corrupt complexity."
A recent report by a team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics (LSE) reinforced this view.
Dr Dennis Rodgers from Manchester University's Brooks World Poverty Institute said,
"Fiction often reaches a much larger and diverse audience than academic work and may therefore be more influential in shaping public knowledge and understanding of development issues."
The report praised The White Tiger for its "passionate depiction of the perils and pitfalls of rampant capitalism in contemporary India"
The novel "deftly highlights the social injustice and moral corruption that underpin the country's apparently miraculous economic development during the past decade," it said.
Adiga's opinion on world politics is now in high demand, illustrated by The Times asking for his view on Barack Obama's election, and the impact it might have on India.
The White Tiger has already sold over 70,000 copies in hardback.
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