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Award Debutant Indian Novelist Aravinda Adiga won the prestigious 50,000 pounds ($87,000) Booker Prize for his novel ‘The White Tiger’. And with it he has become the fifth Indian who has won the prize. Earlier Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and V S Naipaul had won the prestigious prize. He has become one of those three novelists who have won this award for their debutant novels. Earlier Arundhati Roy had won it in 1997 for her novel ‘The God Of Small Things’ and D B C Pierra in 2003 for his novel ‘Vernon God Little’. It was Adiga’s childhood dream to become a novelist.

Career He was born in Chennai in October 1974 and is living presently in Mumbai. He spent some of his time in Australia. He had studied at Columbia and Oxford Universities and also have worked for Time magazine in India. He also have written articles that have appeared in ‘Financial Times’, ‘Independent’ and ‘Sunday Times’. His novel was published by Atlantic Books and was widely praised. He has dealt with prevailing social issues and global economic development. The novel tells the story of the son of a rickshaw puller who represents the “faceless” poor who have remained untouched and have not gained from the recent economic boom.

Views Six novelists had been shortlisted for the prize. They were Amitav Ghosh, Steve Toltz, Linda Grant and Philip Hensher, Sebastian Barry and Aravinda Adiga. Sebastian Barry was the favorite to win the prize but in the end Adiga beat him. According to TOI Michael Portillo, Chair of the judges, 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 manner.” All the six shortlisted novelists are given 2500 pounds and a designer-bound edition of their book.

Judging Panel former MP and Cabinet minister Michael Portillo, editor of Granta Alex Clark; novelists Louise Doughty, founder of Ottakar’s bookshops James Heneage and Hardeep Singh Kohli a TV and radio broadcaster were the members of the judging panel for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.