The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger is a postcolonial novel that sharply satirizes modern India’s cultural, political, and socioeconomic upheavals. It follows Balram Halwai—a tea shop worker turned chauffeur—who vaults himself into the ranks of India’s elite after killing his master. In the process, Adiga’s novel takes stock of the many troubling tensions that underly the country. It dwells upon the lavishness, poverty, corruption, and cruelty of a country that has opened itself up to the 21st century’s restless and globalizing forces.