Aravind Adiga (born 23 October 1974) is an Indian writer and journalist. His debut novel, ''

The White Tiger A white tiger is a tiger with a genetic condition affecting its pelt's pigmentation. White tiger, White Tiger or The White Tiger may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Characters * White Tiger (comics), various Marvel Comics superhero ...

'', won the 2008

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

Biography

Early life and education

Aravind Adiga was born in

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

(now

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

) on 23 October 1974 to Dr. K. Madhava Adiga and Usha Adiga from

Mangalore Mangalore (), officially known as Mangaluru, is a major port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats about west of Bangalore, the state capital, 20 km north of Karnataka–Ker ...

. His paternal grandfather was K. Suryanarayana Adiga, former chairman of

Karnataka Bank Karnataka Bank Limited is an Indian private sector bank based in Mangalore. It is an 'A' Class Scheduled Commercial Bank with a network of 898 branches, 1 extension counter, 885 ATMs, 563 cash recyclers and 546 e-lobbies/mini e-lobbies across ...

, and maternal great-grandfather,

U. Rama Rao Udipi Rama Rau or U. Rama Rau (17 September 1874 - 12 May 1952) was an Indian politician from the Madras Presidency. He belonged to the Indian National Congress. He was a medical doctor by profession and was the founder of a medical journal calle ...

, was a popular medical practitioner and

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...

politician from Madras. Adiga grew up in Mangalore and studied at

Canara High School Canara High School is an educational institution in Mangalore which was founded by Ammembal Subba Rao Pai in 1891. He is also popular as the founder of Canara Bank, now a major nationalized bank in India. Since 1944, when a sister school was op ...

and later at St. Aloysius College, Mangaluru, where he completed his SSLC in 1990. After emigrating to Sydney with his family, Aravind studied at James Ruse Agricultural High School. He later studied English literature at Columbia College of Columbia University, in New York City, under Simon Schama, and graduated as

salutatorian Salutatorian is an academic title given in the United States, Armenia, and the Philippines to the second-highest-ranked graduate of the entire graduating class of a specific discipline. Only the valedictorian is ranked higher. This honor is tradi ...

in 1997. He also studied at

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

, where one of his tutors was Hermione Lee.

Career

Aravind Adiga began his career as a financial journalist, interning at the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

''. With pieces published in the ''Financial Times'' and ''

Money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...

'', he covered the stock market and investment. As a Times correspondent he interviewed US President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

. His review of previous Booker Prize winner Peter Carey's 1988 book, ''

Oscar and Lucinda ''Oscar and Lucinda'' is a novel by Australian author Peter Carey which won the 1988 Booker Prize and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award. It was shortlisted for The Best of the Booker. Plot introduction It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the D ...

'', appeared in ''The Second Circle'', an online literary review. Adiga was subsequently hired by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'', where he remained a South Asia correspondent for three years before going freelance. He wrote ''The White Tiger'' during this period. He now lives in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

, India.

Booker Prize

Adiga's debut novel, ''

'', won the 2008

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a Literary award, literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United King ...

and has been adapted into a Netflix original movie ''

''. He is the fourth Indian-born author to win the prize, after

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Wes ...

, Arundhati Roy, and

Kiran Desai Kiran Desai (born 3 September 1971) is an Indian author. Her novel ''The Inheritance of Loss'' won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. In January 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of 20 "most ...

. V. S. Naipaul, another winner, is ethnically Indian but was born on the Caribbean island of

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

. (More recently,

Geetanjali Shree Geetanjali Shree ( hi, गीतांजलि श्री; born 12 June 1957), also known as Geetanjali Pandey, is an Indian Hindi-language novelist and short-story writer based in New Delhi, India. She is the author of several short stories ...

won the prize for her novel

Tomb of Sand '' Tomb of Sand'' (originally titled ''Ret Samadhi'', hi, रेत समाधि) is a 2018 Hindi-language novel by Indian author Geetanjali Shree. It was translated into English by U.S. translator Daisy Rockwell. In 2022, the book became ...

). The novel studies the contrast between India's rise as a modern global economy and the lead character, Balram, who comes from crushing

rural poverty Rural poverty refers to poverty in rural areas, including factors of rural society, rural economy, and political systems that give rise to the poverty found there.Janvry, A. de, E. Sadoulet, and R. Murgai. 2002“Rural Development and Rural Pol ...

. Adiga explained that just as the "criticism by writers like Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens of the 19th century helped England and France become better societies, "his writing aimed at try ngto highlight the brutal injustices of society". Shortly after he won the prize, it was alleged that Adiga had, the previous year, sacked the agent who secured his contract with

Atlantic Books Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel ''The White Tiger'', which rece ...

at the 2007 London Book Fair. In April 2009, it was announced that the novel would be adapted into a feature film. Propelled mainly by the Booker Prize win, ''The White Tiger''s Indian hardcover edition sold more than 200,000 copies.

Academic criticism

The novel is described as a first-person ''

Bildungsroman In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood ( coming of age), in which character change is impo ...

'' and placed within the wider context of contemporary

Indian writing in English Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language but whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. ...

, as a novel about "the Darkness" (which reminds us of Dickens's London) and a fascinating success story about the overnight rise of one character from rags to riches, but also about India’s development as a global market economy. Mendes (2010) notices in this a certain artificiality, cleverly masked by irony, and remarks the cardboard cut-out' title character equipped with an inauthentic voice that ultimately undermines issues of class politics" (p. 277). Pakistani blogger Sarmad Iqbal reviewed Adiga's ''The White Tiger'' for ''International Policy Digest'', saying: "This novel in multiple ways was an eye opener for me about the rising India as being a Pakistani I grew up listening to and learning nothing good about India. As I got acquainted with all the dark secrets of a rising India divulged by Adiga in this novel, I came across several astonishing similarities between what goes in the 'enemy state' I knew from my childhood and my own country Pakistan."

Other works

Adiga's second book, ''

Between the Assassinations ''Between the Assassinations'' is the second book published by Aravind Adiga though it was written before his first book '' The White Tiger''. The title refers to the period between the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the assassinat ...

'', was released in India in November 2008 and in the US and UK in mid-2009. His third book, '' Last Man in Tower'', was published in the UK in 2011. His next novel, ''

Selection Day ''Selection Day'' is a 2016 sports fiction novel written by Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga. It was shortlisted along with four other writers for the 2017 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. It tells the story of Mohan Kumar, a chutney seller ...

'', was published on 8 September 2016. ''Amnesty'' published in 2020 speaks of the pathetic condition of immigrants. It was shortlisted for the 2021

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...

Bibliography

Novels

* ''

: A Novel''. Atlantic Books, Ltd (UK), Free Press (US), 2008 * ''

''. Picador (IND), 2008 * '' Last Man in Tower''. Fourth Estate (IND), 2011 * ''

''. HarperCollins India (IND), 2016 * '' Amnesty''. Picador, Pan Macmillan, 2020

Short stories

* "The Sultan's Battery" (''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', 18 October 2008
online text
* "Smack" (''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'', 16 November 2008
online text
* "Last Christmas in Bandra" (''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', 19 December 2008
online text
* "The Elephant" (''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', 26 January 2009
online text

References

External links

Official website

''Time'' magazine – Search Results for Aravind Adiga

Articles by Aravind Adiga
for ''The Second Circle, A Review of Contemporary Literature''
"Aravind Adiga in Conversation with Hirsh Sawhney"
'' The Brooklyn Rail'' (September 2008)
"Review of The White Tiger"
''The Telegraph''

''The New York Times'', 14 October 2008
Article by Aravind Adiga
in ''

'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Adiga, Aravind 1974 births Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Indian emigrants to Australia Booker Prize winners Columbia College (New York) alumni Journalists from Karnataka Indian male novelists Kannada-language writers Living people Mangaloreans Writers from Mangalore English-language writers from India 21st-century Indian novelists People educated at James Ruse Agricultural High School Novelists from Karnataka 21st-century Indian male writers Kannada people