You know, Man Booker Prize-winners are usually pretty reliable reads. I've come to this conclusion after buying (yet another) one on the strength of the prize (because you can never trust either cover notes or review excerpts, in my experience) and being bowled over.
The White Tiger is the first novel of the young Aravind Adiga, who's got the odd writing credit to his name. (Yes, that tone is one of envious adoration. I'm conflicted. Let's move on.)
The thing is, it's one of those books that isn't about glitteringly beautiful prose, but about a glittering story, fabulously told. That makes it a tough candidate for Mind-blowing lines, because the mind-blowing is in the whole book, not just its lines.
However, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't scream its virtues from the rooftops. So I wanted to give you a little excerpt with a lot of backstory.
Context is everything with Adiga. Everything.
Here, the lovable protagonist, the servant Balram, is in an extremely sticky situation because of his employer. He explains that India is a land of entrenched servitude, using the metaphor of the market rooster coop, which is tight-packed with birds terrified by the smells arising from the warm poultry carcases and entrails that lie about their cages. They know their fates, but they don't fight. They're trapped, they know it—and they accept it.
In this particular scene, his boss's wife has just left him, and Balram is comforting his drunk, sick employer on a roadside in Delhi:
I put my hand out and wiped the vomit from his lips, and cooed soothing words to him. It squeezed my heart to see him suffer like this—but where my genuine concern for him ended and where my self-interest began, I could not tell: no servant can ever tell what the motives of his heart are.
Do we loathe out masters behind a facade of love—or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?
We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.
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