How far would you go to resolve your financial woes? To "make a killing"? Aravind Adiga brilliantly tackles this question in his novel Last Man in Tower, in which the residents of Vishram Society, a cooperative apartment building in Mumbai, are faced with a sudden opportunity. In Vakola, a rapidly changing neighborhood on the border of a slum, land has become a hot commodity in a city that is desperately crowded. Dharmen Shah, a scrappy real estate mogul, is prepared to pay a princely sum to buy out the current occupants so he can tear their building down and build a new luxury apartment tower. However, they must all agree to take the money and move out -- and they don't all agree.

As time wears on toward the developer's deadline, neighbors are pitted against neighbors, families are torn apart, and long-buried dreams come to life. The clashes reflect the changing nature of Mumbai itself, where, in real life, a notorious slum lies surprisingly close to a star cricket player's nine-million-dollar mansion.

Adiga, who won the 2008 Man Booker prize for his debut novel, The White Tiger, virtually turns Mumbai itself into a character. The overcrowded train compartments, the half-built concrete towers, blue tarpaulins flapping in the monsoon rains, water that trickles from kitchen faucets, greasy samosas, schoolchildren studying astronomy, raw ambition, undying patience: This is modern India at its best and at its worst, but the underlying tragedy is universal.

The novel's characters are complex, and the author gives us a chance to understand the impurity of everyone's motives. In this city, virtually everything is for sale. "In the continuous market that runs right through southern Mumbai, under banyan trees, on pavements, beneath the arcades of the Gothic buildings, in which food, pirated books, perfumes, wristwatches, meditations beads, and software are sold, one question is repeated, to tourists and locals, in Hindi or in English: What do you want?"

A lesser author would have stopped there, but Adiga forces us to confront our own wants, and our attitudes toward success and failure, more directly. Is it wrong to want more? What if "getting" comes at the expense of the elderly, the sick, the poor, the past? What if saying "no" merely reflects a stubborn fear of change? What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Can India become a modern country without losing its own soul? These are marvelous questions to be wrung out of a simple tale about a real-estate buyout.

As Last Man In Tower moves steadily toward its conclusion, the reader cringes but peers through her fingers to keep reading. The novel is funny, literate, bitter, and profound. It earns our respect, and it deserves our attention.