I enjoy comparing novels and their film adaptations -- even when I don't think the film an improvement. So after being one of the last people to get to see SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE before it left theaters, I ordered the novel by Vikas Swarup, originally entitled Q&A. The novel is very different, both more sentimental and more realistic.

Paradoxically, you appreciate how the film improves the story's cinematic and thematic cohesiveness, even though the Bollywood and Hollywood elements are clichés. The novels White Tiger and Sacred Games seem to me to be much more original and complicated novelistic portraits of India's class and gender wars. Sacred Games is particularly well written.

FYI, I think one of the best film adaptations is THE PLAYER (directed by Robert Altman, starring Tim Robbins), which Michael Tolkin adapted from his own novel of the same name. The novel is a better novel and the film a better film precisely because of the differences between them. One of the things that amused me is the fact that the cell phone conversations which are so important to the movie didn't take place in the novel because it was written before they became ubiquitous.