I've not yet read Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, although it sounds promising. But this is only the fourth debut novel to win the Booker Prize, and here's a sobering thought: second novels are often difficult, but if you hit the jackpot first time round the task is particularly daunting. After twenty-three years, Keri Hulme (The Bone People, Booker Prize 1985) still hasn’t produced a second novel; after ten years, Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things, Booker Prize 1997) last year announced that she would be starting her second novel; D. B. C. Pierre (Vernon God Little, Booker Prize 2003) soon came out with a second, but I have the impression that most reviewers thought he’d just stuck two chunks together from material he’d been working on before his Booker winner. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Aravind Adiga.
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