Aravind Adiga venceu hoje o Man Booker Prize, o mais importante prémio literário em língua inglesa, com o seu primeiro romance, White Tiger. Adiga vive em Bombaim, tem 33 anos e é (foi?) jornalista, colaborando com a revista Time e vários jornais diários ingleses. Como conta o Guardian, a atribuição deste prémio é uma surpresa: a aventura indiana de «Tigre Branco» impôs-se numa short list de peso (ao lado de Sebastian Barry, Amitav Ghosh, Linda Grant, Philip Hensher e Steve Toltz), que já deixava para trás nomes consagrados como Salman Rushdie...Aqui fica um excerto do livro vencedor:
«Now, I no longer watch Hindi films - on principle - but back in the days when I used to, just before the movie got started, either the number 786 would flash against the black screen - the Muslims think this is a magic number that represents their god - or else you would see the picture of a woman in a white sari with gold sovereigns dripping down to her feet, which is the goddess Lakhshmi, of the Hindus.
It is an ancient and venerated custom of people in my country to start a story by praying to a Higher Power. I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some god's arse.
Which god's arse, though? There are so many choices.
See the Muslims have one god. The Christians have three gods. And we Hindus have 36,000,000 gods.
Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to choose from.
Now there are some, and I don't just mean Communists like you, but thinking men of all political parties, who think that not many of these gods actually exist.
Some believe that none of them exist. There's just us and an ocean of darkness around us. I'm no philosopher or poet, how would I know the truth? It's true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work - much like our politicians - and yet keep winning re-election to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year.»
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário