A moving and beautifully observed novel, of adolescence, ambition and self-realization, of fathers and sons, set in contemporary Bombay, by the Man Booker Prize winning author of The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower.

`Set in Mumbai, Adiga’s story of two cricketing brothers, divided by success and failure, holds up a mirror to the shattered dreams of a nation . . . Finely told, often moving, and intelligent . . . Adiga’s novel takes in class, religion and sexuality . . . Because Adiga is a novelist, and one who has grown in his art since his Booker Prize-winning debut, The White Tiger, he knows how to talk about all these matters through his characters and their compelling stories.’ Kamila Shamsie, Guardian `Selection Day is at its heart an engrossing and nuanced coming-of-age-novel, with the focus very much on the younger brother, the “complex one”, Manju . . . Intriguing and subtly developed . . . powerful.’ Sunday Times `Gripping. Which brother (if either) will be selected for cricket’s big time? Top-rate fiction from a young master.’ The Times `[Adiga] is not merely a confident storyteller but also a thinker, a skeptic, a wily entertainer, a thorn in the side of orthodoxy and cant.’ New York Times `Adiga seems boundlessly gifted . . . He has produced a nearly flawless novel, and further proof that he is among our finest contemporary novelists.’ San Francisco Chronicle `A bittersweet reflection on the limits of what we can select. Choice – that most enticing Western ideal – does not thrive everywhere equally . . . Adiga’s voice is so exuberant, his plotting so jaunty, that the sadness of this story feels as though it is accumulating just outside our peripheral vision.’ Washington Post

'Novel of the year was Aravind Adiga’s Selection Day . . . Cricket never fails to bring out the best in novelists . . . and this is a fine study of the very different fates of two Indian boys blessed with supreme talent. Everything (the dialogue, psychological analysis, social portrayal) is done in a wonderful pacy narrative style.’ – Declan Kiberd, The Irish Times ‘Books of the Year’

From the Booker Prize winning author of The White Tiger

'The most exciting novelist writing in English today' – A. N. Wilson

Manjunath Kumar is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket – if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling and is fascinated by the world of CSI and by curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know . . . Sometimes it seems as though everyone around him has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself.

When Manju begins to get to know Radha's great rival, a boy as privileged and confident as Manju is not, everything in Manju's world begins to change and he is faced with decisions that will challenge both his sense of self and of the world around him . . .