Following our recent piece on the critical response to Aravind Adiga’s Last Man In Tower, here is the Book Blog’s review by Matthew Richardson.
Aravind Adiga’s new novel, Last Man in Tower, is ostensibly a book about Mumbai. It feeds from the sprawl and bustle of that maturing city, meditating on the riches of commercial
development but, more compellingly, articulating its human cost.
The novel concentrates on the occupants of a ramshackle complex, Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society. As part of a swathe of redevelopment, a goonish property tycoon, Dharmen Shah,
offers the occupants a heady sum to vacate and allow him to mothball the place. He dreams in rhapsodic terms of transforming Mumbai into a new Shanghai.
Soon, of course, the monetary olive branch tempts almost all to agree to the proposal. Only one holds out.
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