Last Man in Tower

Zusatztext 48812601 Informationen zum Autor Aravind Adiga was born in India in 1974 and attended Columbia and Oxford universities. He is the author of Selection Day , the Booker Prize-winning novel The White Tiger, and the story collection Between the Assassinations . He lives in Mumbai, India. If you are inquiring about Vishram Society, you will be told right away that it is puccaabsolutely, unimpeachably pucca. This is important to note, because something is not quite pucca about the neighbourhoodthe toenail of Santa Cruz called Vakola. On a map of Mumbai, Vakola is a cluster of ambiguous dots that cling polyp-like to the underside of the domestic airport; on the ground, the polyps turn out to be slums, and spread out on every side of Vishram Society. At each election, when Mumbai takes stock of herself, it is reported that one-fourth of the city's slums are here, in the vicinity of the airportand many older Bombaywallahs are sure anything in or around Vakola must be slummy. (They are not sure how you even ­pronounce it: Va-KHO-la, or VAA-k'-la?) In such a questionable neighbourhood, Vishram Society is anchored like a dreadnought of middle-class respectability, ready to fire on anyone who might impugn the pucca quality of its inhabitants. For years it was the only good buildingwhich is to say, the only registered co-operative societyin the neighbourhood; it was erected as an experiment in gentrification back in the late 1950s, when Vakola was semi-swamp, a few bright ­mansions amidst mangroves and malarial clouds. Wild boar and bands of dacoits were rumoured to prowl the banyan trees, and rickshaws and taxis refused to come here after sunset. In gratitude to Vishram Society's pioneers, who defied bandits and anopheles mosquitoes, braved the dirt lane on their cycles and Bajaj scooters, cut down the trees, built a thick ­compound wall and hung signs in English on it, the local ­polit­icians have decreed that the lane that winds down from the main road to the front gate of the building be called Vishram Society Lane. The mangroves are long gone. Other middle-class buildings have come up nowthe best of these, so local real-estate brokers say, is Gold Coin Society, but Marigold, Hibiscus, and White Rose grow and grow in reputationand with the recent arrival of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, a five-star, the area is on the verge of ripening into permanent middle-class propriety. Yet none of this would have been possible without Vishram Society, and the grandmotherly building is spoken of with reverence throughout the neighbourhood. It is, strictly speaking, two distinct Societies enclosed within the same compound wall. Vishram Society Tower B, which was erected in the late 1970s, stands in the south-east corner of the original plot: seven storeys tall, it is the more desirable building to purchase or rent in, and many young executives who have found work in the nearby Bandra-Kurla financial complex live here with their families. Tower A is what the neighbours think of as Vishram Society. It stands in the centre of the compound, six storeys tall; a marble block set into the gate-post says in weathered lettering: This plaque was unveiled by Shri Krishna Menon, the honourable defence minister of India, on 14 November 1959, birthday of our beloved prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Here things become blurry; you must get down on your knees and peer to make out the last lines: . . . has asked Menon to convey his fondest hope that Vishram Society should serve as an example of good housing for good Indians. Erected by: Members of the Vishram Society Co-operative Housing Society Fully registered and incorporated in the city of Bombay 14-11-1959 The face of this tower, once pink, is now a rainwater-stained, fungus-licked grey, although veins of primordial pink show wherever the roofing has protected the ...

A Best Book of the Year:
*The Boston Globe
Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Daily Beast*

“Brilliant. . . . If you loved the movie Slumdog Millionaire, you will inhale the novel Last Man in Tower. Adiga’s second novel is even better than the superb White Tiger. . . . First-rate. . . . You simply do not realize how anemic most contemporary fiction is until you read Adiga’s muscular prose. His plots don’t unwind, they surge.”
—USA Today

“Provocative and decadent. . . . The kind of novel that’s so richly insightful . . . it’s hard to know where to begin singing its praises. . . . Vain, shrewd and stubborn, [Masterji] is one of the most delightfully contradictory characters to appear in recent fiction.”
—The Washington Post

“Masterful. . . . With this gripping, amusing glimpse into the contradictions and perils of modern India, Adiga cements his reputation as the preeminent chronicler of his country’s messy present.”
—Newsweek
 
“Adiga has written the story of a New India. . . . This funny and poignant story is multidimensional, layered with many engaging stories and characters.”
—The Seattle Times

“A rare achievement. . . . Adiga captures with heartbreaking authenticity the real struggle in Indian cities, which is for dignity. A funny yet deeply melancholic work, Last Man in Tower is a brilliant, and remarkably mature, second novel.”
—The Economist
 
“With wit and observation, Adiga gives readers a well-rounded portrait of Mumbai in all of its teeming, bleating, inefficient glory. . . . Like any good novelist, Adiga’s story lingers because it nestles in the heart and the head.”
—Christian Science Monitor
 
“Last Man in Tower is a nuanced study of human nature in all of its complexity and mystery. (It is also humane and funny.) Nothing is quite as it seems in the novel, which makes for surprises both pleasant and disturbing.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
“Adiga populates his fiction with characters from all parts of India’s contemporary social spectrum, and the intensity of his anger at aspects of modern India is modulated by his impish wit.”
—The Wall Street Journal 
 
“Adiga maps out in luminous prose India’s ambivalence toward its accelerated growth, while creating an engaging protagonist . . . a man whose ambition and independence have been tempered with an understanding of the important, if almost imperceptible, difference between development and progress.”
—Entertainment Weekly
 
“[An] adroit, ruthless and sobering novel. . . . Adiga peppers his universally relevant tour de force with brilliant touches, multiple ironies and an indictment of our nature.”
—The Star Ledger
 
“Adiga is an exceptionally talented novelist, and the subtlety with which he presents the battle between India’s aspirants and its left-behind poor is exceptional.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
 
“A brilliant examination of the power of money. . . . Ultimately Last Man in Tower is about how greed affects compassion. . . . Adiga skillfully unfolds a surprising conclusion that underscores what a great novel this is.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
 
“[Full of] acute observations and sharp imagery. . . . Like all cautionary tales, it embodies more than a little truth about our times.”
—Financial Times
 
“Dickensian. . . . Well worth the time of any reader interested in the circumstances of life in a seemingly foreign place that turns out to be awfully familiar. . . . Readers above all else will find pleasure and pain in the ups and downs of the human family itself.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

Autorentext

Aravind Adiga was born in India in 1974 and a…