Last Man in Tower

Aravind Adiga

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 20, 2011 - Fiction - 400 pages

From the Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger, a stunning novel of greed and murder in contemporary Mumbai. 

At the heart of Adiga's gripping second novel ("his plots don’t unwind, they surge" —USA Today) are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown.

Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a luxury building named the Shanghai. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in retired schoolteacher Masterji. Shah offers a generous buyout to Masterji and his neighbors in a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah’s high-rise would be built. They can’t believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home.

As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday. Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore—and expose—it.

Contents

• Section 1: 5
• Section 2: 13
• Section 3: 29
• Section 4: 47
• Section 5: 77
• Section 6: 107
• Section 7: 113
• Section 8: 127
• Section 9: 135
• Section 10: 136
• Section 11: 145
• Section 12: 150
• Section 13: 163
• Section 14: 172
• Section 15: 185
• Section 16: 187
• Section 17: 192
• Section 18: 194
• Section 19: 198
• Section 20: 207
• Section 21: 219
• Section 22: 238
• Section 23: 242
• Section 24: 247
• Section 25: 253
• Section 26: 267
• Section 27: 275
• Section 28: 283
• Section 29: 285
• Section 30: 291
• Section 31: 299
• Section 32: 311
• Section 33: 321
• Section 34: 334
• Section 35: 360
• Section 36: 363
• Section 37: 367
• Section 38: 376
• Section 39: 387
• Section 40: 389

About the author

Aravind Adiga was born in India in 1974 and attended Columbia and Oxford universities. He is the author of Selection Day, the Booker Prize-winning novel The White Tiger, and the story collection Between the Assassinations. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Last Man in Tower; Vintage International
• Author: Aravind Adiga
• Edition: unabridged
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011
• ISBN: 0307700402, 9780307700407
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Cultural Heritage; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Urban & Street Lit