Utterly savage tale, bitterly funny and utterly horrifying. A portrait of India corrupt and superstitious and stricken with poverty while oceans of money pour in through American outsourcing and Chinese investment. The filth and the squalour permeates every level, from the backward village where our anti-hero is born to the glamorous suites of the wealthy where he labours as a servant and finally breaks free in a deliberate act of violence. Fast-paced, sharply written with a precision of language and a cheerfulness of tone that belies the ugliness of the mess it depicts. It's essentially a crime novel: Jim Thompson or Donald E Westlake might have written something vaguely along these lines. It's superbly written, though I don't suppose that in itself would be enough to catch the eye of Booker judges. I suppose the social portrait of class and servitude set against the backdrop of high-tech capitalism in a teeming post-colonial setting attracted the attention, and it's hard to argue with that. The philosophical digressions probably didn't hurt either. Anyway, cracking, terrifying, angering read. Post-colonial, post-boom Ireland don't have it nearly so bad as some.