Аравинд Адига — новинки

Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life - possessive, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his foetus, but you know his corpse.
Meet Balram Halwai, the 'White Tiger': servant, philosopher, entrepreneur... murderer. Balram was born in a backwater village on the River Ganges, the son of a rickshaw-puller. He works in a teashop, crushing coal and wiping tables, but nurses a dream of escape. When he learns that a rich village landlord needs a chauffeur, he takes his opportunity, and is soon on his way to Delhi at the wheel of a Honda. Amid cockroaches, call-centres, thirty-six-million gods, slums, shopping malls, and crippling traffic jams, Balram comes to see how the Tiger might slip the bars of his cage.

A riveting, suspenseful, and exuberant novel from the bestselling, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger and Selection Day about a young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder—and thereby risk deportation.

Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life.

But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. The deed was done with a knife, at a creek he’d been to with her before; and a jacket was left at the scene, which he believes belongs to another of his clients—a doctor with whom Danny knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: Come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported? Or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of this day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.

Propulsive, insightful, and full of Aravind Adiga’s signature wit and magic, Amnesty is both a timeless moral struggle and a universal story with particular urgency today.

Manjunath Kumar is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket - if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling and is fascinated by the world of CSI and by curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things about himself and about the world that he doesn't know... Sometimes it seems as though everyone around him has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself.

When Manju begins to get to know Radha's great rival, a boy as privileged and confident as Manju is not, everything in Manju's world begins to change and he is faced with decisions that will challenge both his sense of self and of the world around him...

Аудиокнига "Белый тигр" познакомит слушателей с простым бедняком из индийской деревни Белрамом. Он принадлежит к самому нищему сословию, его семья владеет только жалкой лачугой и разбитой тележкой, им едва удается прокормить себя. Среди всех своих братьев и сестер Белрам, которого прозвали Белый тигр, самый сообразительный и смекалистый. Парень понимает, что он достоин лучшей участи, чем та, что ждет его в нищей деревеньке. Пытаясь вырваться из мира бедноты, он отправляется в большой город, чтобы заявить о себе в полный голос.

Real estate developer Dharmen Shah's offer to buy out the residents of Vishram Society--a formerly respectable, now crumbling apartment complex that abuts the infamous Dharavi slums--is more than generous. But one man stands in the way of Shah's luxury high- rise: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher who will not leave his home in Vishram's Tower A. Shah is a dangerous man to refuse, but as the demolition deadline looms, Masterji's neighbors--friends who have become enemies, acquaintances turned co- conspirators--may stop at nothing to score their payday.

21st Century Mumbai is a city of new money and soaring real estate, and property kingpin Dharmen Shah has grand plans for its future. His offer to buy and tear down a weathered tower block, making way for luxury apartments, will make each of its residents rich – if all agree to sell. But not everyone wants to leave; many of the residents have lived there for a lifetime, many of them are no longer young. As tensions rise among the once civil neighbours, one by one those who oppose the offer give way to the majority, until only one man stands in Shah’s way: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher, once the most respected man in the building. Shah is a dangerous man to refuse, but as the demolition deadline looms, Masterji’s neighbours – friends who have become enemies, acquaintances turned co-conspirators – may stop at nothing to score their payday…

Searing. Explosive. Lyrical. Compassionate. Here is the astonishing new novel by the Man Booker Prize - winning author of The White Tiger, a book that took rage and anger at injustice and turned it into a thrilling murder story. Now, with the same fearlessness and insight, Aravind Adiga broadens his canvas to give us a riveting story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, set in the booming city of Mumbai. At the heart of this novel are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a building named the Shanghai, which promises to be one of the city's most elite addresses.
Larger - than - life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in a retired schoolteacher called Masterji. Shah offers Masterji and his neighbors - the residents of Vishram Society's Tower A, a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah's luxury high-rise would be built - a generous buyout. They can't believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home. As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday.
Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore - and expose - it. Vivid, visceral, told with both humor and poignancy, Last Man in Tower is his most stunning work yet.

Né à Madras en 1974, aujourd'hui installé à Bombay, Aravind Adiga est en effet un sacré trouble-fête, et son Tigre blanc se pare des pires noirceurs pour dépeindre l'envers de ce «miracle économique indien» dont parlent les amateurs de clichés...
C'est le portrait d'un Rastignac oriental que brosse Adiga dans ce conte sulfureux qui fustige les archaïsmes religieux et la corruption affairiste d'un pays «où l'on gagne à jouer sur les deux tableaux, car l'entrepreneur indien doit être à la fois loyal et véreux, sincère et sournois». (André Clavel - L'Express du 12 novembre 2008)

Aravind Adiga livre un premier roman brillant et incisif qui met au jour les dysfonctionnements de la «plus grande démocratie du monde». Cinquième auteur indien à recevoir le Booker Prize, ce journaliste de 34 ans qui a étudié à Columbia et à Oxford s'inscrit dans la lignée de Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy et Kiran Desai. Prometteur (Émilie Musset - Le Point du 18 décembre 2008

Welcome to Kittur, India. It's on India's southwestern coast, bounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Kaliamma River to the south and east. It's blessed with rich soil and scenic beauty, and it's been around for centuries. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. And if the characters in Between the Assassinations are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads of the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and the poets and the prophets of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed.
A twelve-year-old boy named Ziauddin, a gofer at a tea shop near the railway station, is enticed into wrongdoing because a fair-skinned stranger treats him with dignity and warmth. George D'Souza, a mosquito-repellent sprayer, elevates himself to gardener and then chauffeur to the lovely, young Mrs. Gomes, and then loses it all when he attempts to be something more. A little girl's first act of love for her father is to beg on the street for money to support his drug habit. A factory owner is forced to choose between buying into underworld economics and blinding his staff or closing up shop. A privileged schoolboy, using his own ties to the Kittur underworld, sets off an explosive in a Jesuit-school classroom in protest against casteism. A childless couple takes refuge in a rapidly diminishing forest on the outskirts of town, feeding a group of "intimates" who visit only to mock them. And the loneliest member of the Marxist-Maoist Party of India falls in love with the one young woman, in the poorest part of town, whom he cannot afford to wed.

Between the Assassinations showcases the most beloved aspects of Adiga's writing to brilliant effect: the class struggle rendered personal; the fury of the underdog and the fire of the iconoclast; and the prodigiously ambitious narrative talent that has earned Adiga acclaim around the world and comparisons to Gogol, Ellison, Kipling, and Palahniuk. In the words of The Guardian (London), "Between the Assassinations shows that Adiga...is one of the most important voices to emerge from India in recent years."

A blinding, brilliant, and brave mosaic of Indian life as it is lived in a place called Kittur, Between the Assassinations, with all the humor, sympathy, and unflinching candor of The White Tiger, enlarges our understanding of the world we live in today.

Балрам по прозвищу Белый тигр - простой парень из типичной индийской деревни, бедняк из бедняков. У его семь нет ничего, кроме лачуги и тележки. Среди своих братьев и сестер Балрам - самый смекалистый и сообразительный, и он явно достоин лучшей участи, чем та, что уготовила ему родная деревня. Белый Тигр врывается в город, где его ждут невиданные и страшные приключения, где он круто изменит свою судьбу, опустится на самое дно, а потом взлетит на самый верх.

Но «Белый тигр» - вовсе не типичная индийская мелодрама про «миллионера из трущоб», нет. Это революционная книга, цель которой - разбить шаблонные представления об Индии, показать ее такой, какая она есть на самом деле. Это страна, где Свет каждый день отступает перед Мраком, где страх и ужас идут рука об руку с весельем и шутками.

В 2008 году жюри премии «Букер» отдало свой главных приз Аравинду Адиге и его великолепному "Белому тигру".