Indian Author Adiga Wins Booker Prize for White Tiger

Indian author Aravind Adiga has won the UK's prestigious Man Booker Prize for his debut novel the White Tiger, the Guardian reports. Adiga's novel explores the darker side of India's rise to prosperity through its narrator, the son of a rickshaw puller who escapes crushing poverty. "In many ways it was the perfect novel," said the chairman of the judges' panel.

Adiga, 33, "undertakes an extraordinary task—he gains and holds the attention of the reader for a hero who is a thoroughgoing villain," said judge Michael Portillo. The main criterion for the prize, he said, was: "Does this book knock my socks off? And this did." Adiga is the second-youngest Booker winner and only the third debut novelist to take the $87,000 prize.
(More Booker Prize stories.)