White tiger, paperback/aravind adiga

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 todays Indias cockroaches and call-centres, its 36,000,004 gods, slums, shopping malls, and crippling traffic jams, Balram learns of a new morality at the heart of a new India.

Driven by desire to better himself, he comes to see how the Tiger might escape his cage .

through murder.