Aravind Adiga, as seen in Prospect

The news that Aravind Adiga's dazzling novel The White Tiger had won this year's Booker prize—only the fourth first-time author ever to do so—was especially exciting here at Prospect, as we were lucky enough to publish an excerpt from the novel way back in February this year. A huge number of stories and manuscripts come to us for consideration each month, but this yet-to-be-published début crackled off the page with a rare energy. You can read our extract (which is taken from the opening) for free here. And, of course, you can—and should—go and buy a copy of the complete novel right away.

It's not so long ago that Private Eye was gleefully listing The White Tiger among such leaden "worst-sellers" as David Blunkett's autobiography. But it's Atlantic Books who are getting the last laugh. At the time of typing, the novel was listed as amazon.co.uk's top-selling book in the fiction category. Where the Booker leads, Britain follows…