Booker Prize Shortlist: No Salman Rushdie

The Booker Prize longlist has been narrowed down to six books, whose authors will now compete for the prize that will be announced on October 14th. The shortlist?

• Aravind Adiga The White Tiger
• Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture
• Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies
• Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs
• Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency
• Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole

The Indian in me notes the presence of Amitav Ghosh and Aravind Adiga. The Guardian reports that

Adiga, who is Times magazine's Asia correspondent, exposes the underbelly of
India's new Tiger economy. The story is told through the letters of Balram who
escapes the poverty of rural India to become a rich businessman in Delhi, but
has committed a murder to reach his place in the "new" India

This reminds me of a big-time businessman in India, Ramnath Goenka. I recall reading an interview with him--perhaps during my high school years. In the interview, Goenka said something like "the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak" when asked whether he had killed anybody. Now, I am not sure if that interview question, and the answer too, was probing something that was real. Truth can be a lot stranger than fiction.