First-time novelist wins £50,000 Man Booker Prize
A FIRST-TIME novelist has won the Man Booker Prize for fiction.
Aravind Adiga, who was born in Madras and lives in Mumbai, India, beat five acclaimed novelists to win the £50,000 literary prize with his book The White Tiger.
The 33-year-old becomes only the third debut novelist - after DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little in 2003 and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things in 1997 - to win the prize.
The winner was announced last night by former MP and Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo who chaired the judging panel.
He said: “The judges found the decision difficult because the shortlist contained such strong candidates.
“In the end, The White Tiger prevailed because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure.
“The novel undertakes the extraordinarily difficult task of gaining and holding the reader’s sympathy for a thoroughgoing villain.
“The book gains from dealing with pressing social issues and significant global developments with astonishing humour.”
The White Tiger holds the reader’s sympathy for a thoroughgoing villain.
The White Tiger, published by Atlantic, has been described as the "compelling, angry and darkly humorous" journey of a teashop worker from an Indian village to entrepreneurial success.
Adiga becomes the fourth Indian-born author to win the prize, following in the footsteps of world-famous compatriot Salman Rushdie who won in 1981 with Midnight’s Children.
He can now look forward to increased sales of his first novel. Last year's winner, The Gathering by Anne Enright, has sold over half a million copies worldwide.
READ EXPRESS.CO.UK'S ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE SIX SHORTLISTED BOOKS…
BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger, (Atlantic)
Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture (Faber and Faber)
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (John Murray)
Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago)
Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency (Fourth Estate)
Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole (Hamish Hamilton)
