Ram Mohammad Thomas has been arrested—for answering twelve questions correctly on TV’s Who Will Win a Billion? Ram has never gone to school and never read a newspaper. There is no way a poor orphan from Jimmy’s Bar could know the names of the planets or the plays of Shakespeare ... unless he cheated. Rescued from his police cell by a lawyer, Ram reviews television footage of his flawless performance and takes us on an amazing tour of his life growing up in Asia’s biggest slum—from the day he is salvaged from a garbage can, to his job with a faded Bollywood star, to working as an over-creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal, to falling in love with Nita, a young prostitute. A brilliantly conceived fable with a modern sensibility, Slumdog Millionaire is a comic and charming novel that paints an enthralling portrait of humanity.
Originally published as Q&A.