Aravind Adiga, a 33-year-old first-time novelist from India, is the surprise winner of this year's Man Booker £50,000 prize for fiction for his "perfect" book The White Tiger.

He is the second-youngest winner, only the third debutante to win in the 40-year history of the prize and also the fourth Indian-born writer to be acclaimed, joining compatriots Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.