Thomas Abraham, President and CEO of Hachette Book Publishing India: "What we all are very happy about is that we've reached a stage where abroad you are not counted as an 'Indian' ... an Indian author is not an oddity that has to be given a quota of awards."
"If you track the Booker over the last seven years, there has always been an Indian connection — whether it was Yann Martel writing a book based on an Indian story, or Indian authors being shortlisted."
Nilanjana Roy, host of the literary blog Kitabkhana: "The idea that what Adiga has done is pathbreaking is ridiculous. No doubt, he has written a great book and given us a character, Balram Halwai, that will stay with us. But as anyone in India who reads widely enough knows, he's not 'the first to go where no other Indian author has gone before' as reviews in the west have proclaimed."