Overview

"From the Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger, a stunning novel of greed and murder in contemporary Mumbai.  At the heart of Adiga's gripping second novel (""his plots don’t unwind, they surge"" —USA Today) are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a luxury building named the Shanghai. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in retired schoolteacher Masterji. Shah offers a generous buyout to Masterji and his neighbors in a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah’s high-rise would be built. They can’t believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home. As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday. Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore—and expose—it."

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Epic. . . Adiga capture[s] the vicious underbelly of modern-day real estate in India's maximum city. Even more so, he taps into the lives and minds of India's growing middle class. They inhabit the sphere between the city's slums and, say, the world's first billion-dollar home recently built in Bombay, with more square footage than the Palace of Versailles. Like the United States more than a half a century earlier, India is in its ascension, and all the materialism and belligerence about who might be getting left behind is a perfect echo of our Cold War era. The Indians of Adiga's book yearn for material stability. What that means, how much one really needs to be secure, is at the heart of the story. For the defiant Masterji, [what it means] is the dangerous desire of wanting nothing other than to die in the place where his family's memories reside. <br>--Meera Subramanian, Orion Magazine<br> <br> Vivid. . . A novel written by a Man Booker prize winner [comes with] high expectations, [and] Adiga's latest Last Man in Tower, does not disappoint. He skillfully builds the backdrop for his story. With few words, he sets the scene of poverty and filth in the slums in sharp contrast to the newfound riches made by some in Mumbai, contrasting the new India and its bright technological future with the last remnants of the British Raj. . . . Graphic and colorful . . . thought-provoking and intense. <br>--Christine Morris Campbell, The Decatur Daily <br> In the rapidly expanding city of Mumbai, where new buildings sprout like weeds, the construction business isn't just a front for illegal activity, it's a raison d'etre. When a less-than-ethical developer tries to lure, and later coerce, a community of long-standing tenants out of their apartment complex, it is only the widowed schoolteacher of 3A who continues to rebuff him. In this struggle, Adiga--the author of the Man Booker-winning The White Tiger --maps out in luminous prose India's ambivalence toward its acce

A Best Book of the Year: The Boston GlobeRichmond Times-DispatchThe 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

Author Information

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.

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