Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday night with his novel, The White Tiger, joining a pantheon of past Booker winners that includes such literary giants as V.S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis and Salman Rushdie.

For Ravi Mirchandani, who edited Adiga’s book and was sitting beside him at the table, the win was especially sweet. The White Tiger was the first book he bought for Atlantic, which hired him in 2006 after he was fired from a job at Random House. The novel was shown to him by Adiga’s agent, who insisted that he read it that night and make an almost instant decision about whether to bid for it. “I sat down with the manuscript and after the first six pages I was just so excited,” Mirchandani said. “When you’re reading a first novel, you’re often thinking: ‘This is fantastic, keep it up, keep it up’ ” — only to find the writer stumbles and falls. In Adiga’s case, Mirchandani said, “The voice is fantastic and it never falters.”

For more info, go to http://www.time.com