Avavind Adiga has won the 2008 Man Booker Prize tonight for his debut novel, The White Tiger. The prestigious £50,000 award is handed out annually for a full-length novel written in English by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or Ireland, with this year’s winner hailing from India.

Adiga beat out five other short-listed novels to take the prize: The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant, The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher, and A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz.

The thirty-three year old author became one of only three authors to win with their debut offering, joining DBC Pierre’s 2003 winner, Vernon God Little and Arundhati Roy’s 1997 winner, The God of Small Things.

A video of Adiga will be available on the Booker Prize website on October 15th.