I got it: Aravind Adiga with his book. pic/ap

After an "emotionally draining" and closely fought final judging session, Aravind Adiga, one of the two debut novelists on the Man Booker shortlist, was last night awarded the £50,000 (Rs 42 lakh)  prize for The White Tiger. Judges said the work presented the "dark side of India" and likened it to Shakespeare's Macbeth "with a delicious twist".

Second youngest

Adiga (33), from Mumbai, was the second-youngest writer in the 40 years of the competition to claim the prize. He was also the second novelist of Indian origin to win with a debut novel as Arundhati Roy did in 1997 with The God Of Small Things.

Accepting his award in London, Adiga said the work came out of his journalistic assignments, which took him travelling across India to its northern regions.

It's not sexy lit

"I grew up in the south, which was very different culturally and economically to the places along the Ganges where I was travelling," he said. "For the first time, I met people like rickshaw-pullers, and it got me thinking about India in a different way. This book was an attempt to capture the voice of the men I met."
Asked what he would spend the prize money on Adiga joked, "The first thing I'm going to do is find a bank where I can put it in."

He said he was determined to write about class divisions and iniquities — a topic he felt was not considered sexy  and that the book's main character was partly inspired by a rickshaw-puller he met, who angrily said, "You've listened to me, but when you go back, you'll forget about me." Adiga said, "I did not forget ."

The annual Booker prize, which goes to the best work of fiction by an author from the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, all but guarantees worldwide readership and a surge in book sales.

Michael Portillo, the chair of the judges, What set it apart was its originality. 

Adiga who?
Aravind Adiga was born in Madras in 1974 and partly raised in Australia. He studied at Columbia University in New York and at Oxford, and has written for The Independent and  Time magazine. Now based in Mumbai, he is the third debutant to win the Booker, after Roy and DBC Pierre, who won in 2003 for Vernon God Little.

The also rans 
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry 
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh 
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant 
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher 
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz