India's young novelist Aravind Adiga has won the Man-Booker-Prize for the year 2008 for his first novel 'The White Tiger'.Adiga is the third first-time novelist to win the Booker Prize and the fourth Indian-born author to win the Booker Prize, joining compatriots Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai since it was set up in 1969. 'The White Tiger' is a "compelling, angry and darkly humorous" novel about a man's journey from Indian village life to entrepreneurial success. The book is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity.
The favourite among British Bookies for the award, Adiga pipped aside Amitav Ghosh's Sea Of Poppies, another Indian in the shortlist to bag the 50,000 pounds prize ($87,000), which goes to the best work of fiction by an author from the British Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland.The other shortlisted authors were Australia's Steve Toltz, with A Fraction Of The Whole, Irishman Sebastian Barry for The Secret Scripture, and British writers Linda Grant and Philip Hensher for The Clothes On Their Backs and The Northern Clemency, respectively.
Earlier, Adiga's The White Tiger and Amitav Ghosh's Sea Of Poppies pipped Rushdie's The Enchantress Of Florence to make the six novels in a list full of fresh faces.The other shortlisted authors were Australia's Steve Toltz, with A Fraction Of The Whole, Irishman Sebastian Barry for The Secret Scripture, and British writers Linda Grant and Philip Hensher for The Clothes On Their Backs and The Northern Clemency, respectively.
A total of 41 books have won the prize since it was launched in 1969, because the award was shared in 1974 and 1992. Contenders must have been published in the past year and originally written in English.
Born in Chennai in 1974, Adiga grew up in Mangalore and studied at Canara High School, then at St. Aloysius' College, where he completed his SSLC in 1990.After immigrating to Sydney with his family, he studied at James Ruse Agricultural High School. He studied English literature at Columbia University, New York and Magdalen College, Oxford.
Adiga began his journalistic career as a financial journalist, with pieces published in Financial Times, Money and the Wall Street Journal.His review of previous Booker Winner Peter Carey's book "Oscar and Lucinda" appeared in The Second Circle, an online literary review.He was subsequently hired by the TIME magazine, where he worked as a correspondent for three years before going freelance. During his freelance period, he wrote 'The White Tiger'. He is now based in Mumbai.
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