Does the Booker Prize-winning ‘White Tiger’ still hold up?

A homeless family huddling around a fire on a road divider on a cold morning in New Delhi. Can an author who hasn’t lived this life write authentically about it? Yes, if he or she has the skill to do so. Photo: AFP

I have arrived late to the White Tiger phenomenon. Back in 2008 when the book was first published, practically every reader I knew was reading and raving about the novel – and even more so when it won that year’s Man Booker Prize for fiction.

This placed the book’s then 33-year-old debut author Aravind Adiga in the same ranks as Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai, also Indian writers who have been awarded the coveted literary prize.