Monsoon or the white tiger

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Monsun or The White Tiger is a book by Klaus Kordon for young people that was published in 1980. The book received the Friedrich Gerstäcker Prize in 1982 .

Summary

The book begins like a story from a thousand and one nights . Gopu, a 13 year old handsome street vendor, lives in Bombay . Like his siblings, he works all day to support his family. Gopu's father is in acute danger of unemployment because the hotel in which Gopu's father works as a lift boy is about to be closed. The father seeks and seeks, but he cannot find a job. The family must therefore fear for their existence. So it is just right for Gopu that Bapti, the son of a wealthy factory owner from Madras , wants a boy and chooses Gopu for it.

Gopu is taken to Madras to serve Bapti, who is of the same age. Gopu does not understand the conflicts between rule and staff and in particular suffers from the conflict of having to feed his family on the one hand and restricting his personal freedoms on the other hand and having to always be available as a boy.

So it burdens him to have to hide an affair between the landlord and his underage servant.

When he and Bapti are involved in a traffic accident, Gopu has to spend one night in jail. Gopu has had enough and flees. He stays in Madras, where he soon makes new friends among the homeless and learns the craft of snake charmers from them.

Bapti, who was actually always looking for a friend instead of a boy in Gopu, follows him into the dangerous life of the homeless, but soon the rainy season, the monsoon, comes . During the rainy season, which often means death for the homeless, Gopu and his friends have to fight their way through and they meet the pregnant servant, who in turn fled the house of Bapti's parents after her pregnancy became known.

Fearing for his family in Bombay, he then bought a ticket to Bombay. But when he arrives at his family, he finds that they now live in a slum. But despite this depressing situation, he is optimistic about the future.

literature