Leading article: Prize tiger

Acknowledging, naturally, their terrible mistake in passing over our columnist Philip Hensher's Sheffield-based magnum opus The Northern Clemency, we are gratified to see that this year's Booker judges have not been afraid to take a punt on an interesting new voice. In awarding the prize to first-time novelist Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger, the judges are continuing a tradition of promoting fresh, first-rate fiction from the Indian subcontinent.

Adiga has a wicked contemporary satirical eye. The novel is framed as a series of letters to the Chinese premier by an Indian businessman, the White Tiger. In one, the correspondent writes: "The future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, mobile phone usage and drug abuse." But something is surely missing. Had the Tiger added sub-prime mortgages to that little list, he would have had a full house.

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