Aravind Adiga

Every building tells a story, but in the jungles of Mumbai, one building - and one man- stand on the borderline between India's past and its future. Ask any Bombaywallah about Vishram Society - Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society - and you will be told that it has been pucca for some fifty years despite its location under the flight path and border of slums. But Bombay has changed in half a century - not least its name - and the world in which Tower A was first built is giving way to a new city ...

Winner of the 2008 Man-Booker Prize for The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga now offers a blinding, brilliant, and brave mosaic of Indian life as it is lived in a place called Kittur, between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads of the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and the poets and prophets of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed.

In this short story collection set in the Indian city of Kittur sometime between the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and that of her son Rajiv in 1991, Adiga creates a cast of characters--from a twelve-year old boy to a Marxist-Maoist Party member--who are immersed in class struggles and their own personal denouements.

Balram Halwai ist ein ungewöhnlicher Ich-Erzähler: Diener, Philosoph, Unternehmer, Mörder. In diesem Roman erzählt er uns die schreckliche und zugleich faszinierende Geschichte seines Erfolges - der ihm keineswegs in die Wiege gelegt war. Balram - der "weisse Tiger"--Kommt aus einem Dorf im Herzen Indiens. Seine düsteren Zukunftsaussichten hellen sich auf, als er, der klügste Junge im Dorf, als Fahrer für den reichsten Mann am Ort engagiert wird und mit ihm nach Delhi kommt. Hinter dem Steuer eines Honda City entdeckt Balram - und wir mit ihm - eine neue Welt. Balram sieht, wie seinesgleichen, die Diener, aber auch ihre reichen Herren mit ihrer Jagd nach Alkohol, Geld, Mädchen und Macht den Grossen Hühnerkäfig der indischen Gesellschaft in Gang halten. Durch Balrams Augen sehen wir das Indien der Kakerlaken und Call Center, der Prostituierten und Gläubigen, der alten Traditionen und der Internetcafes, der Wasserbüffel und des mysteriösen "weissen Tigers". (Quelle: Klappen- und Umschlagtext).

Dans une lettre au premier ministre chinois en visite en Inde, Balram Halwai raconte son histoire, celle d'un laisse pour compte du miracle economique indien. Enfant intelligent mais d'une extraction si miserable qu'il ne peut terminer ses etudes secondaires, il devient le chauffeur d'un nouveau riche de Delhi. Il decouvre une Inde prospere et rutilante dont il sera toujours exclu. Premier roman.--[Memento].

From Aravind Adiga, the bestselling, Booker Prize­-winning author of The White Tiger, a dazzling new novel about two brothers in a Mumbai slum who are raised by their obsessive father to become cricket stars, and whose coming-of-age threatens their relationship, future, and sense of themselves. Manjunath Kumar is fourteen and living in a slum in Mumbai. He knows he is good at cricket--if not as good as his older brother, Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling, and is fascinated by curious scientific facts and the world of CSI. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know. Sometimes it even seems as though everyone has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself. When Manju meets Radha's great rival, a mysterious Muslim boy privileged and confident in all the ways Manju is not, everything in Manju's world begins to change, and he is faced by decisions that will challenge his understanding of it, as well as his own self. Filled with unforgettable characters from across India's social strata--the old scout everyone calls Tommy Sir; Anand Mehta, the big-dreaming investor; Sofia, a wealthy, beautiful girl and the boys' biggest fan--this book combines the best of The Art of Fielding and Slumdog Millionaire for a compulsive, moving story of adolescence and ambition, fathers, sons, and brothers.