Aravind Adiga plots speedy Booker follow-up

Aravind Adiga's second work of fiction, which he wrote in parallel with his Booker prize-winning novel The White Tiger, will be published this July, his publisher Atlantic Books has announced. Between the Assassinations, which is already a bestseller in India, is a collection of overlapping stories charting the lives of the residents of a fictional Indian town over the seven-year period between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv.

Adiga's debut The White Tiger, which exposes the underbelly of modern India through the eyes of corrupt businessman Balram, was the surprise winner of last year's Booker prize. It saw off competition from Philip Hensher, Sebastian Barry and Amitav Ghosh to take the award and was described by chair of judges Michael Portillo as "a book on the cutting edge", set apart by its originality, which managed to "knock [his] socks off".