The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga is a highly recommended book

This powerful novel set in modern India caught and held my attention from start to finish. 

Told over seven nights and addressed to the Chinese premier (about to visit India), this first person narrative tells how a proud and immoral Bangalore 'entrepreneur' rose from poor humble beginnings in a   small backwater village on the banks of the Ganges to become a moneyed taxi fleet owner.

It is a tale that asks us to suspend nearly all judgments as we watch this poor, but brilliant lad use his eavesdropping ways to learn the secrets of the rich to overturn them at their own game.

As driver for his master, the less than swift son of a local don, the narrator kills his boss, robs him of hundreds of thousand of rupees (used to bribe New Delhi officials) and flees to become an entrepreneur elsewhere. The protagonist acts though he knows that the practice of the dons is to kill off his family in retribution.

The book admirably depicts the vast divide in living conditions between the rich and the poor and the utterly corrupt ways of the rich. One of the book's messages is that in such a corrupt brutal society, it is somehow okay to kill your oppressor to reap social justice. (Indeed, there are a litany of injustices in the book.)

Here are some memorable quotes:

"Now G.B. Road is in Old Delhi, about which I should say something. Remember, Mr. Premier, that Delhi is the capital of not one but two countries--two Indias. The Light and the Darkness both flow into Delhi. Gurgaon, where Mr. Ashok lived, is the bright, modern end of the city, and this place, Old Delhi, is the other end. Full of things the modern world forgot all about--rickshaws, old stone butildings, the Muslims."

"Wonders of the old city--a row of open sheds, and big buffaloes standing in each shed with their butts toward you, and their tails swatting flies away like windshield wipers, and their feet in immense pyramids of shit."

By the way, our narrator is called by his village school teacher a white tiger--"the creature that comes only once in a generation." He is indeed the brightest student in his school.

The book is a great read. Enjoy!