"In the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat - or get eaten up." So claims Balram Halwai, the narrator of Aravind Adiga's first novel, The White Tiger. Balram's village ancestors were sweet-makers, his father a rickshaw-driver; he has been lucky to escape by learning to read and write. We are told his story through the letters he addresses to Wen Jiabao, the Premier of China.

Balram admires the entrepreneurial spirit of that country and its growing economic dominance. (Significantly, he does not address the leaders of Britain or America.) He ends up in Delhi, where he is astonished by the decadence and corruption he finds; towards the end of the novel, he commits a serious crime and then goes on the run. His letters indicate he is confident he will never be caught. At first, he is glad to be the driver of Mr Ashok, a rich businessman. He has a regular wage and a master who, having lived in New York, thinks of himself as fair-minded. Balram proudly wears the khaki uniform he is given. But Mr Ashok and his wife, Pinky, treat him as an interesting specimen rather than an individual. While driving them around one day, he happens to touch his eye as they pass a shrine. "The villagers are so religious", says Mr Ashok enthusiastically; Balram, despite the fact that he never prays, begins to touch his eye at every tree. "They worship nature. It's beautiful, isn't it?" There are also less spiritual duties: Balram is obliged to shampoo the family's two Pomeranian dogs - Puddles and Cuddles - and to wash the feet of Mr Ashok's father. "The only thing that can take the smell of dog skin off a servant's hands", Balram grimly informs us, "is the smell of his master's skin."

Other drivers introduce Balram to Murder Weekly, a magazine that publishes stories such as "He Wanted his Master's Wife: Love - Rape - Revenge", and is, perhaps surprisingly, subsidized by the government. Balram explains that the servant-protagonist is usually mad or a pervert and certainly never gets away with his crime. Meanwhile, forced to comfort his master when his wife leaves him, he asks himself: "Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?". After Balram goes on the run, he spots a wanted poster with his face on it. As he stares at it - partly proud, partly afraid - a man grabs his wrist and asks whose picture it is. Balram tells him it is a hero who has prevented a terrorist attack, and he feels guilty for fooling the "poor illiterate", who is as ignorant as he imagines his father was, and as ignorant as India's poor continue to be. Balram soon forgets that he was once the man on the poster. As he tells Wen Jiabao, the description of him that reads "thin and small" is no longer true: "Fat and potbellied would be more accurate".

The White Tiger resembles the stories in Murder Weekly. It is quick, entertaining and full of vividly drawn types: the scheming servant, the corrupt businessman, the spoilt wife. Its lack of subtlety can be wearying, as can its cynicism. But it is a useful counter to optimistic tales of India's roaring economy.

Aravind Adiga
THE WHITE TIGER
321pp. Atlantic. £12.99.
978 1 84354 720 4.

Explore The TLS

• TLS Selections

• TLS Archives

• TLS Arguments

• TLS Writers

• TLS Letters

• Poetry in the TLS

• Then & Now