Aravind Adiga was born in India in 1974, and educated in India and Australia. He studied English Literature at Columbia University, New York, and gained an M.Phil. at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Since 2000, he has worked as a journalist, first as a financial correspondent in New York, then returning to India in 2003 to work as a correspondent for TIME magazine. His articles on politics, business and the arts have appeared in many publications.

His debut novel, The White Tiger, was published in 2008 and won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. It takes the form of a series of unsent letters to the Chinese premier from Balram Halwai, a murderer who left his village to work as a chauffeur in Delhi.

His second novel is Between the Assassinations (2009), which charts the lives of the residents of an Indian town over a seven-year period between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv. It was shortlisted for the 2009 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize.

His latest work is Last Man in Tower (2011).


Bibliography

  • 2016 Selection Day
  • 2011 Last Man in Tower
  • 2009 Between the Assassinations
  • 2008 The White Tiger

Awards

  • 2009 British Book Awards Author of the Year
  • 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book)
  • 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best First Book)
  • 2009 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize
  • 2009 Trubidy Show Listerners' Choice Book of the Year
  • 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

Some Famous Quotes Written by Arvind:
  • “See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.”
  • “I was looking for the key for years, But the door was always open”
  • “The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave”
  • “It's amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.”
  • “Go to Old Delhi,and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundred of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them.They know they are next, yet they cannot rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The very same thing is done with humans in this country.”
  • “The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”
  • “You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.”
  • “Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books”
  • “Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.”
  • “Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.”