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LONDON - Indian author Aravind Adiga insisted Wednesday that winning the 2008 Booker Prize with his first novel will not change his life -- adding that he had already nearly finished a second book.
The 33-year-old Oxford-educated writer beat five other authors from the Commonwealth or Republic of Ireland late Tuesday to win the prize, one of the literary world's most prestigious awards, for "The White Tiger".
Along with the 50,000-pound (87,000-dollar, 64,000-euro) prize, his novel is all but guaranteed a worldwide readership and a spike in sales, but Adiga is certain that his life will not change.
"It won't change much, because I live in Mumbai, and I'm going back there day after tomorrow, and life in Mumbai has a way of reminding you that writers are not particularly important," he told BBC Radio.
"It won't mean anything to my neighbours, they won't know about this. Life will continue."
Of his future literary efforts, he said: "India just teems with untold stories, and no one who is alive to the poetry, the anger and the intelligence of Indian society will ever run out of stories to write."
"I do want to write about people who haven't been written about, and there's a lot of them in India still."
Asked about writing his next book, he said he didn't "have to sit down to write it, it's almost done."
He declined to give details on the subject of the upcoming book.Chairman of the judges Michael Portillo said the originality of "The White Tiger" in showing "the dark side of India" had set it apart from the others.
"My criteria were 'does it knock my socks off?', and this one did," he said.
Adiga was one of two Indian writers nominated for the award, alongside Amitav Ghosh for "Sea of Poppies."
The other shortlisted authors were Australia's Steve Toltz, with "A Fraction of the Whole", Irishman Sebastian Barry for "The Secret Scripture", and British writers Linda Grant and Philip Hensher for "The Clothes on Their Backs" and "The Northern Clemency" respectively.
"The White Tiger" follows Balram Halwai, the son of a rickshaw puller who dreams of better things than life as teashop worker and driver.
But when he finally makes it to the bright lights of New Delhi, he is caught between his loyalty to his family and his desire to better himself.
"This has been always the story of a man's quest for freedom, that's fundamentally how I've seen it," Adiga said, describing the novel to the broadcaster.
"It's a story that's set in today's India, and revolves around the great divide between those Indians who have made it and those who have not.
Adiga, who was born in Madras in October 1974 and now lives in Mumbai, is the fourth Indian-born author to win the Booker Prize since it was set up in 1969, joining compatriots Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.
His book is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity.Adiga is also only the third debut novelist to win after DBC Pierre in 2003, for "Vernon God Little", and Roy in 1997 for "The God of Small Things". - AFP/vm
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