Novel yang memenangi Man Booker Prize Award 2008 ini tidak mengisahkan harimau putih India. Sebaliknya mengandungi kritikan sosial pengarangnya, jurnalis Aravind Adiga, terhadap fenomena sosioekonomi dan sosiopolitik India, yang dipersembahkan secara kreatif dalam bentuk tujuh pucuk surat daripada Ashok Sharma, usahawan muda Bangalore kepada Wen Jiaobao, Perdana Menteri China. Ashok Sharma menggelarkan dirinya sebagai The White Tiger of Bangalore.
Usahawan muda Ashok Sharma bukanlah Ashok Sharma. Beliau ialah Balram Halwai anak lelaki Vikram Halwai, khadam dan pemandu yang telah membunuh tuannya dan lari bersama wang sebanyak tujuh ratus ribu rupee. Tuannya itu akan menggunakan wang tersebut untuk merasuah seorang menteri. Wang itulah yang telah dipergunakan oleh Balram Halwai untuk mentransformasi dirinya daripada seorang khadam di Delhi kepada seorang usahawan di Bangalore.
Malah Balram Halwai pun bukan Balram Halwai kerana sejak dilahirkan hingga bersekolah, beliau tidak bernama kecuali digelar munna, yang bermaksud budak lelaki. Nama Balram itu diberikan oleh gurunya pada hari pertama persekolahannya.
" ... my first day in school, the teacher made all the boys line up and come to his desk so he could put our names down in his register. When I told him my name was, he gaped at me: 'Munna? That's not a real name.' He was right: it just means "boy."
'That's all I've got, sir,' I said. It was true. I'd never been given a name.
'Didn't your mother name you?'
'She's very ill, sir. She lies in bed and spews blood. She's got no time to name me.'
'And your father?'
'He's a rickshaw-puller, sir. He's got no time to name me.'
'Don't you have a granny? Aunts? Uncles?'
'They've got no time either.'
... 'Well, it's up to me, then, isn't it?' ... 'We'll call you ... Ram. Wait - don't we have a Ram in this class? I don't want any confusion. It'll be Balram. You know who Balram was, don't you?'
... So I was Balram from then on."
Bagaimanakah pula Ashok Sharma @ Balram Halwai @ Munna mendapat gelaran 'the white tiger?'
Gelaran tersebut diberikan oleh seorang nazir yang melawat sekolahnya.
" ... The inspector pointed his cane straight at me. 'You, young man, are an intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals - the creature that comes along only once in a generation?'
I thought about it and said: 'The white tiger.'
'That's what you are, in this jungle.'
... So that's how I became the White Tiger."
The White Tiger, suatu kelainan yang menambat pembaca dari muka surat pertama ke muka surat 276.
