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Narcopolis

3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 · rating details · 1,517 ratings · 313 reviews

Shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize

Jeet Thayil’s luminous debut novel completely subverts and challenges the literary traditions for which the Indian novel is celebrated. This is a book about drugs, sex, death, perversion, addiction, love, and god, and has more in common in its subject matter with the work of William S. Burroughs or Baudelaire than with the subconti...more

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published April 12th 2012 by Penguin Press HC, The (first published January 1st 2012)

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Aug 26, 2012 Blair rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize, favourites, past-and-present, read-on-kindle, 2012-release

Narcopolis isn't so much a story as a non-linear network of little stories and vignettes: a sort of tapestry of pieces of fiction and character studies. The characters include an opium/heroin addict who initially acts as narrator (although the narrative soon wanders away from him and takes on a life of its own), several opium den 'entrepreneurs', a eunuch prostitute and a degenerate poet-slash-artist. Set in Bombay, and more specificially on Shuklaji Street where Rashid's opium house is located,...more

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May 18, 2013 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

20. Pearl Ruled (p129)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Jeet Thayil’s luminous debut novel completely subverts and challenges the literary traditions for which the Indian novel is celebrated. This is a book about drugs, sex, death, perversion, addiction, love, and god, and has more in common in its subject matter with the work of William S. Burroughs or Baudelaire than with the subcontinent’s familiar literary lights. Above all, it is a fantastical portrait of a beautiful and damned generati...more

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Apr 19, 2013 ·Karen· rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: india-pakistan

text: from Latin textus "style or texture of a work," literally "thing woven," from past participle stem of texere "to weave,"
An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns -- but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. (From the Online Etymology Dictionary)

So, the storyteller spins a yarn, but the poet creates a fabric, with warp and weft, with coloured threads craftily juxtaposed to make a pattern, whether as sumptuous as damask, as regimented as tartan...more text: from Latin textus "style or texture of a work," literally "thing woven," from past participle stem of texere "to weave,"
An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns -- but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. (From the Online Etymology Dictionary)

So, the storyteller spins a yarn, but the poet creates a fabric, with warp and weft, with coloured threads craftily juxtaposed to make a pattern, whether as sumptuous as damask, as regimented as tartan, as workaday as plain ticking or as dull as drugget. But nevertheless something to run the fingers over, shake out, feel the heft and flow. Hold up to the chin and see if the colour suits you? No, I think that would be stretching this metaphor too far.

What happens if the poet has quite a different concept of his writing? Night-time tales that vanish in sunlight like vampire dust…...smoke in the lungs, in the nostrils and a little something sweet for the mouth, blue smoke from pipe to blood to eye to I and out into the blue world. Writing as dreaming other people’s dreams. Writing as addiction.
I’ll tell you what happens.
What happens is that the words slip in and out as soft as a down feather on the breeze, but waft away just as swiftly. No patterns form, something suffuses the mind, but quite what is hard to pin down. (Another dressmaker’s metaphor).

I found myself reading great chunks of this, coming back two days later and remembering nothing, re-reading chapters and wondering if someone had mischievously exchanged the pages between times, retaining the cover, even chapter headings but none of the words I read before. My husband, perhaps, cunningly trying to fool me into believing I have early onset dementia, off to the care home with you my dear. Saraswati and Shiva destroying and transforming. My brain deliquescing. The effect is (obviously) unsettling. Get a grip, you’re not concentrating. So I tried really hard, and made a mental note of this guy with the wonderful name, Newton Xavier. A painter whose art is “Catholic guilt exploded to devastating effect. He doesn’t paint as much as eviscerate and disembowel.” Two characters look at magazine reproductions of his pictures, which are gory to say the least. But then he comes to read poems at the PEN centre. No wonder there’s confusion. An extremely detailed literary review at the South Asia Journal has Xavier down as a poet, so it’s not just me, you see. Anyway, having made my careful mental note of An Important Theme and An Apparently Important Character, he disappears, never to be seen again. Sigh. Damn, just when I thought I’d spotted something that would provide some basis or other for a pattern.
Haphazard is understating the case. Nothing is left out. Bombay, Chowpatty, riots, the pathaar maar killings; gender identity, disguises, reinventions of self; poverty, pain, uprootedness, flux; slow afeem opium and fast garad heroin; art, religion, poetry, reincarnation, spirits; stories within stories within stories like Russian dolls; violence, sex, corruption, blackmail, murder.

The narrator is proud and amazed to be able to bring Xavier, the artist, to the opium den where Dimple lovingly prepares the pipes. He and Dimple have recently looked at pictures of his work in a magazine, and now here he is in person, isn't that incredible?
Dimple shook her head once. There was nothing incredible about it, she said. I thought it was so because I spoke English, because I read books, and because my parents paid for my education and my upkeep. For me everything was surprising, the world was full of wonder, the most random idiotic occurrence was incredible because my luck made it so. For people like her, for the poor, the only incredible thing in the whole world was money and the mysterious ways in which it worked.
She's right, Xavier said. Only the rich can afford surprise and or irony. The rich crave meaning.

There's a warning there, to those of us who speak English and read books and whose parents paid for our education. We're going to find it hard to make sense of this fictional world.
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Sep 30, 2012 Ali rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Because now there's time enough not to hurry, to light the lamp and open the window to the moon and take a moment to dream of a great and broken city, because when the day starts its business I'll have to stop, these are night-time tales that vanish in the sunlight like vampire dust”
This will be a fairly short review – as I don’t want to spend too much time talking about a book I disliked. I stopped short of hating it – just – but I certainly didn’t like it. The writing is good - in places very...more “Because now there's time enough not to hurry, to light the lamp and open the window to the moon and take a moment to dream of a great and broken city, because when the day starts its business I'll have to stop, these are night-time tales that vanish in the sunlight like vampire dust”
This will be a fairly short review – as I don’t want to spend too much time talking about a book I disliked. I stopped short of hating it – just – but I certainly didn’t like it. The writing is good - in places very good, lovely prose –something I always enjoy – you might expect that at least I suppose in a Booker shortlisted novel, but the subject, the setting and the characters I disliked.
“Then there are the addicts, the hunger addicts, the rage addicts, the poverty addicts , and power addicts, and the pure addicts who are addicted not to substances but to the oblivion and the tenderness the substances engender. An addict, if you don't mind me saying so, is like a saint. What is a saint but someone who has cut himself off, voluntarily, from the world's traffic and currency.”

Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay is the setting, a place of opium addicts, prostitutes and violence. The novel spans many years, starting in the 1970’s with changing narrators it is chaotic and hallucinatory and really rather squalid, upon finishing it I wanted a bath. The narrator of the start of the novel, a visitor to the Opium den of Rashid, where he also meets the eunuch prostitute Dimple, he returns at the end of the novel, many years later to see who is left and find out what has happened to the people he knew back then.
The construction of the novel is more like many small stories that weave in and out of each other in a non-linear way. We meet Mr Lee – a regular patron of Dimple’s whose back story takes us to the cultural revolution of Mao’s china. I did find the stories of Mr Lee and Dimple to be the most interesting, and for a while after struggling with the beginning of the book I began to actually enjoy it. However I found it difficult to remain interested in the characters and the construction of the novel made it hard at times to follow. This construction is very clever – this dream like almost hallucinatory quality is beautifully suited to these stories – the narratives seem like the confused and foggy view of an opium addict might look.
I had looked forward to this book – and judging by the reviews of it on good reads and amazon I am something of a lone voice. Most people seem to have liked it a lot – so I must have missed something, it always rather annoys me if I feel I have missed what others haven’t. Well we can’t always like the same things can we?
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Aug 09, 2012 Sridhar Reddy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-prose

Three and a half stars. Jeet Thayil's 'Narcopolis' contains some of the most vividly realized characters I've ever come across in a book. Deeply felt and complex, they each weave in and out of reality and consciousness, bound by an endless stream of narcotics and the den that serves to encapsulate the crushed ambitions of a city full of dreamers.

Thayil's prose is both poetic and raw, his wordplay masterful and yet his subject matter abhorrent. It's a vivid juxtaposition that mirrors the drug ex...more

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Mar 14, 2012 Laura rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-mt-bookpile

This wasn't so much a "read" as a "DNF" - the plot, such as it is, centers around a 1970s opium den in Bombay (at least that's where most of the 100-ish pages I got through are centered), and we start to meet Dimple, a eunuch, and Mr. Lee, the Chinese owner of the den. As one might expect from this setting, the prose is somewhat hallucinatory and the timeline non-linear.

The problem wasn't that so much as that there was no narrator or, for me, another hook to bring me into the story. I kept wonde...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Jo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An odd book but rather compelling. I really enjoyed it. I wavered a bit part of the way through but it got back on track and I'm pleased I read it. The characters are well written, quite complex and not stereotypical. It doesn't pull any punches and is quite explicit about opium smoking and prostitution. There is an undercurrent of very dark,black humour in places. It felt quite surreal in places too in terms of overall story but the places and characters felt very real. If that's a bit contradi...more

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May 21, 2013 Seriene rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Narcopolis was every bit an experience I'd expected it to be. Captivating yet revolting, it pulls you close and pushes you away at the same time- a paradox which is perfectly in tune with the story it tells: that of intoxication.

Contrary to what many have claimed, this book is NOT about Mumbai. Rather, it is about people in unending quests for an ever elusive high. Mumbai forms a mere backdrop- an afterthought added by the author (maybe to lure nostalgic readers into experiencing a rather indig...more

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May 06, 2013 Ken Mannion marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Irish times: It's only 292 pages, but this feels like a great big beast of a novel, full of poetry and poverty, squalor and sex, death and drugs – and Bombay, which is both the first and last word of the book.
The story – or network of stories, for the novel is formed of several interconnected narratives, each focused on a different character – revolves around Rashid's opium establishment, which is frequented by gangsters and garad-dealers, pimps, pushers, junkies, tourists, and the hijra (eunuch...more

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May 01, 2013 Clarence added it · review of another edition

To be honest, it is quite fascinating reading about the "lowest of the low" - prostitutes, addicts, pushers, pimps, wife beaters, the abused and the abusers - living in the squalid Mumbai's red light district, oozing sex, drugs and random acts of violence.

Narcopolis is an odd but compeling enough story about a drug (opium then heroin) and a city (old Bombay to new Mumbai), about the struggle of life and the inevitability of death, about all kind of addictions to fight off loneliness and despair...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Abhilash rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is certainly a unique reading experience to me. Hats off to Jeet Thayil for making such a magnificent debut.The haunting picture of Bombay in the 1970s presented as a series of wonderful vinnetes. A roller coaster ride over city that epitomized the struggles and disappointments of generation. The words that were long suppressed from a million tongues now find utterance. Yes there was once such a city, such a generation and such opium pipes, yes they were there. Nothing even remotely similar...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I guess one conclusion we might draw from the first sentence of "Anna Karenina" is that there are many more unhappy stories to be told than happy ones. Fair enough. Despite a rather optimistic outlook, I don't mind slogging through the grim and the sad, as any scan of the list of novels below will surely demonstrate. But, recent reads are taking unhappiness to a new height--or I guess I should say depth. Anyway, we now take a step into the drug scene in Mumbai right at the time things were chang...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Angela Savage rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asia

Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis is unlike anything I've ever read, an intoxicating trip into the opium dens of Old Bombay in the 1970s.

The plot, such as it is, hangs like loose, swaying threads from the garments of the habituées of an opium room on Shuklaji Street run by the twice-married, permanently intoxicated Rashid. His assistant and sometime lover is Dimple, aka Zeenat, a hijra (transsexual), who does not use the words woman or man to describe herself. 'Some days I'm neither, or I'm nothing. On o...more Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis is unlike anything I've ever read, an intoxicating trip into the opium dens of Old Bombay in the 1970s.

The plot, such as it is, hangs like loose, swaying threads from the garments of the habituées of an opium room on Shuklaji Street run by the twice-married, permanently intoxicated Rashid. His assistant and sometime lover is Dimple, aka Zeenat, a hijra (transsexual), who does not use the words woman or man to describe herself. 'Some days I'm neither, or I'm nothing. On other days I feel I'm both,' she tells the anonymous narrator.

Around Rashid, Dimple, Rashid's Chinese predecessor Mr Lee and regulars like Ramesh aka Rumi and said narrator, stories swirl like smoke, drifting from Bombay's hard streets to revolutionary China, from hijra brothels to a detox facility run by a former monk and heroin addict.

Novelist Hari Kunzru's experience of Narcopolis mirrors my own: 'Stories unfold and hang in the air. They slide into each other, until you're not quite sure how long you've been reading it.'

A former alcoholic and heroin addict, Jeet Thayil offers unique insight into the world he describes. While he doesn't shirk away from the awfulness of addiction, he also captures its allure -- especially as an alternative to the available reality. As Rumi says of Bombay as he queues outside Rashid's opium room, waiting for an African drug mule to shit out the heroin he has smuggled in, '[H]ow the fuck are you supposed to live here without drugs? ...I challenge you to live here without turning to Grade A narcotics'.

Like Bombay itself, Narcopolis is not for the faint-hearted, though the prose in this 2012 Man Booker Prize nominated debut is lyrical and mesmerising, even as it describes scenes of terrible poverty and cruelty.

But for readers like me who value the insights that a local writer can shed on a place as confronting and intriguing as the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) and who welcome glimpses into worlds beyond our imagination, Narcopolis will not only satisfy: it will blow your mind.(less)

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Jan 08, 2013 Harsha Priolkar rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

A book that's heavy on description and thin on plot. Nevertheless Thayil's prose is addictive and engaging and it's the reason I stuck with the book and have given it 3 Stars.

The book offers an in depth look at Bombay's drug world - by looking at a tiny microcosm, Shuklaji Street and it's resident pimps, dealers, drug lords, prostitutes and addicts - all connected by narcotics - primarily Opium. The main character Dimple is well fleshed out and intriguing, although not ultimately as mysterious...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Maree Hall rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Narcopolis”, set in the opium dens of Bombay has a languorous and dreamy quality appropriate to it’s narcotic theme. Essentially the story of Dimple, a beautiful eunuch who prepares pipes in Rashid’s opium den, the story slides in and out of the following characters whose paths cross hers. From the Hollywood adventures of the angry man, Rumi, to the poignant tale of Mr Lee’s upbringing and flight from Maoist China, these are essentially stories of lives beyond control. As one of the characters...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Vinita rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was really looking forward to reading Narcopolis. Jeet Thayil was himself an addict for 20 years, and the book is an insider's account of Bombay's drug scene.

That Thayil is an excellent writer is apparent in the first few pages. His style though, is gratingly monotonous. The writing can only hold your attention for so long. Ultimately the plot and the characters need to generate enough interest to make you want to carry on. I finished Narcopolis and realized that I felt nothing about any chara...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Ben Dutton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Jeet Thayil’s debut novel, Narcopolis, tells the story of an opium den in Bombay in the 1970s. Shuklaji Street is where the no-hopers, the prostitutes and eunuchs, the dealers and the users hang out, and Rashid’s opium den is the most famous. Later in its life, film stars will come there, directors will look to it for inspiration, and the dispossessed will find solace in its walls.

Thayil’s prose is liquid gold. He has perfect control, and his novel drifts between scenes as if riding the opium h...more Jeet Thayil’s debut novel, Narcopolis, tells the story of an opium den in Bombay in the 1970s. Shuklaji Street is where the no-hopers, the prostitutes and eunuchs, the dealers and the users hang out, and Rashid’s opium den is the most famous. Later in its life, film stars will come there, directors will look to it for inspiration, and the dispossessed will find solace in its walls.

Thayil’s prose is liquid gold. He has perfect control, and his novel drifts between scenes as if riding the opium high. That he has received critical acclaim as a poet comes as no surprise – there is poetry in these words. His central characters – Rashid, Dimple, the eunuch, and Mr Lee, the Chinese worker who has fled his homeland (narrated through an exciting aside that takes us into Mao’s China) – are all equally well drawn. There is a subplot about a murderer – Pathar Maar – that adds nothing to the novels, and whose excision wouldn’t affect a thing.

The world of these opium dens falls apart when heroin arrives. What has been a dream-like India becomes a nightmare India. Race riots, religious riots, death all around this once great city. Showing this transition from one drug to another, and its effect on a country, is cleverly rendered, though it does give the impression that Thayil is becoming nostalgic for a lost age. It is worth noting that Thayil has admitted he lost twenty years of his life to addiction, so to read this novel as a nostalgic impression of a lost era might be to misread it.

Novels about drugs and drug addiction are notoriously difficult to pull off. For every Junky, there are two or three bad literary trips. Thayil’s novel – but for a few minor missteps (the killer subplot, Dimple’s transition from illiterate to opining on Baudelaire and Cocteau) this is a novel of some considerable power. That it is has been long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2012 is unsurprising.

Will it win the prize?

In 2008 Aravind Adiga won for The White Tiger, so we know Man Booker judges are not averse to granting the prize to novels about modern life in the Indian subcontinent. The most similar novel to have previously made the long list is Trainspotting – and that failed to make the short list as, apparently, it “offend[ed] the sensibilities of two judges.” Such unenlightened attitudes would hopefully not cloud an audience in 2012, but it cannot be ruled out. It is one of those novels whose longevity is deserved, but will it be recognised? I’d like to see it short listed, and I suspect it might be.(less)

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Mar 20, 2012 CuteBadger rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is dreamy, hallucinatory book about a group of characters linked by a drug den in Bombay. It moves backwards and forwards in time, the characters arrive, leave and arrive again, but things stay largely the same for much of its length.

When I started the book I was concerned that I wasn't going to enjoy it as the 7-page prologue is all one sentence in the stream-of- consciousness style. While that's an apt style for a novel looking at the effect of drugs it would be very hard work for the re...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Fatma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't think much of this book in the first few chapters, but the last part of the book just got progressively better. I think the whole book is structured like an intense drug experience which is brilliant. Dimple is clearly a very jaded person, having been castrated through no choice of her own and 'made' into a woman (there was a grossly euphimistic phrase for it in the book) so that she could be forced into prostitution. I love that the author doesn't try to make you feel sorry for her in...more I didn't think much of this book in the first few chapters, but the last part of the book just got progressively better. I think the whole book is structured like an intense drug experience which is brilliant. Dimple is clearly a very jaded person, having been castrated through no choice of her own and 'made' into a woman (there was a grossly euphimistic phrase for it in the book) so that she could be forced into prostitution. I love that the author doesn't try to make you feel sorry for her in the way many authors are guilty of, by painting Dimple in the sorriest colors ever, droning on about the misery of her lot in life and the evils of the people around her. It left so much more to the imagination and Jeet was never guilty of pontificating on social issues.

The structure of the book is like this:

- The events leading up to the nasha ('high'): We learn a bit about the characters, they are still optimistic and relatively innocent. They talk about books, poetry, life in general.

- The first buzz of the nasha: In the early days it was opium dens that ruled Bombay, although their decline was apparent from the very beginning. Nevertheless, most of the story takes place in one particular den, where Dimple tends to the pipe, and customers are plenty.

- The build up to the highest point, where the mind gets lost and wanders into the recesses of memory: Parts of the past lives of the main characters resurface. This part is where it starts to get interesting.

- The comedown: They scrabble to get back to their previous elated states. This is where new drugs enter Bombay, and things get more complicated.

- The 'recovery': The characters are no longer in their altered state of being. They are just themselves, realizing their escape was only fleeting. Disappointment as the world appears even more grim and ugly than when they first took that trip into the opium den.

I'm not sure if this is what the author intended, but that's how I saw it. I think this is a book to be devoured in a very short time, otherwise you won't be able to visualise the themes (or at least I wouldn't have). This is not a plot-driven story. It's more like one crazy-ass dream. (less)

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Oct 02, 2012 Amit Shetty rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1st-impressions-last, a-little-bird-told-me, made-by-for-in-india, they-deserve-more

Eunuchs...Prostitutes...Drugs...Sex...More Drugs...More Sex

This is what the entire book deals with. It is a nostalgic account of a man who lived in the 70's era of Bombay, where drugs, prostitution and corruption ran rampant. Not much different from now, except everything here now occurs under a veil of secrecy.

The author has done quite a good job of describing the Bombay of that era. How people were carefree during those days, enjoying the simpler things in life unlike today where time and mon...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Chris Craddock rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

Bombay sounds like quite an astonishing place, as described by author Jeet Thayil in his first novel, Narcopolis. About Narcopolis, Thayil said, "I've always been suspicious of the novel that paints India in soft focus, a place of loved children and loving elders, of monsoons and mangoes and spices. To equal Bombay as a subject you would have to go much further than the merely nostalgic will allow. The grotesque may be a more accurate means of carrying out such an enterprise."

While I did notice...more Bombay sounds like quite an astonishing place, as described by author Jeet Thayil in his first novel, Narcopolis. About Narcopolis, Thayil said, "I've always been suspicious of the novel that paints India in soft focus, a place of loved children and loving elders, of monsoons and mangoes and spices. To equal Bombay as a subject you would have to go much further than the merely nostalgic will allow. The grotesque may be a more accurate means of carrying out such an enterprise."

While I did notice a few mangoes and monsoons in his manuscript, he described an India that was utterly different than the one we are accustomed to. While he did mention both mangoes and monsoons, there was one word that he never uttered: Mumbai. The novel begins and ends, however, with the old name of that metropolis: Bombay. Bombay is the Narcopolis of the book's title, and Bombay is the star and subject of the book, its alpha and omega. Jeet's refusal to even mention the word Mumbai shows his allegiance to the ancient name, the ancient metropolis.

I really enjoyed Jeet Thayil's prose. As one reviewer put it: "His idiom is the result of a cosmopolitan blend of styles, and is yet, quite clearly, his own." The story is told with the voice of Dom, an Indian student from a rich family. Dom got into trouble while living in New York so he was sent back home only to get into even deeper trouble on Shuklaji Street. He is honest about his shortcomings, and doesn't pretend to care about anything other than drugs. He is not very likeable, in fact--but probably doesn't care whether you like him or not. This gives his words a certain authenticity--a ring of truth. Why would he lie about other matters when he is so blunt about himself? Though the book begins with the run-on-sentence-to-end-all-run-on-sentences just to give a feel for the free-flowing conversations of opium dens, it settles into a very simple style, very matter-of-fact, not trying to show off or impress, but soon you are blown away. This is literature, Jack, and it effortlessly combines pop culture references from India, England, and America with Hindi and Sanskrit street slang, and just a soupçon of poetry.

The Bottom Line is that Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil is a most impressive first novel. It gives quite a vivid impression of Bombay as it undergoes massive changes, and serves as both guided tour and elegy. The story begins in the 1970s and carries through to the recent past. Bombay is now a global village where ancient traditions, though threatened by the relentless march of time, still exist alongside modern cultural influences such as the music of Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, and the science fiction of Philip K. Dick. Narcopolis is a tour de force that lulls you into a lotus dream of O then slams you in the face like a cobblestone cast by Pathar Maar, the stone killer.

Ciao, Bombay.

Much More Than Monsoons and Mangoes, a review by Chris Craddock of Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis(less)

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Aug 21, 2012 Jeva rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Truth is Heroin is Beauty.”
-Narcopolis, Jeet Thayil.

At first glance, Narcopolis is a novel about drugs. At second glance, it is a novel about lust. At third, it is a novel about Bombay. And, when the reader finishes the last breathtaking page of Jeet Thayil’s debut Man Booker long-lister, Narcopolis will again have transformed into being about something else entirely.

So goes the magic of a great book.

In an interview with NPR, Thayil speaks with a poet’s voice: confidant and yet careful, giving...more

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Oct 05, 2012 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read2012, booker-winners-and-listed, around-the-world, location-india

Another one from the 2012 Booker shortlist.

Publisher summary:
Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.

Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through th...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Carolyn Shank rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Jeet Thayil's NARCOPOLIS has made the Booker Award short list for best book of 2012, and I can certainly see why. Set partially in a 1970's Bombay opium den , its characters include a eunuch, a poet, gangsters, pimps, prostitutes, atheists, the maimed, unwashed, unwanted and unloved -- and the haunted. They are Muslim, Hindu, and Christian. Thayil's Bombay, before the age of technology reinvented it, is that of a poverty-ridden, deteriorating society, one which is an almost exact parallel to th...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Abhinav rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-reading-saga, modern-literary-fiction, noir, semi-favorites

A very strange book indeed. In fact, I'd say I've never read anything like it before.

Jeet Thayil's Booker-nominated novel starts out in Bombay of the 1970s, when the narrator Dom Ullis arrives in the city, having been deported back to India from the States on account of his substance abuse problems. He meets a multitude of different characters like Dimple the eunuch, Newton Xavier the painter, Rumi the frustarted married man & many others at Rashidbhai's chandu khana (opium den) in Shuklaji...more A very strange book indeed. In fact, I'd say I've never read anything like it before.

Jeet Thayil's Booker-nominated novel starts out in Bombay of the 1970s, when the narrator Dom Ullis arrives in the city, having been deported back to India from the States on account of his substance abuse problems. He meets a multitude of different characters like Dimple the eunuch, Newton Xavier the painter, Rumi the frustarted married man & many others at Rashidbhai's chandu khana (opium den) in Shuklaji Street, which lies at the heart of the city's red light district Kamathipura. The plot of the novel continues through the next two decades into the new millennium & revolves around the lives, desires & troubled minds of the people who frequent the opium den. While most of the book follows a linear narration, there is a slight detour to China in Book Two ('Story of the Pipe') when the story of Mr. Lee's (Dimple's physician-cum-friend-mentor) childhood & youth is narrated in flashback mode.

The fascinating aspect of 'Narcopolis' is the hallucinatory yet realistic narration. It gets into the minds of the different characters when they are in a dreamy state (post-abuse) & challenges the reader to keep track & understand when the character is in reality or is dreaming. (Sounds bit like Inception? It certainly isn't anything remotely similar) But the style certainly ensures that the characterisation is top-notch as one gets to delve into the deepest, darkest recesses of the minds of the different characters. Also, the prose is exquisite & beautiful despite the rather excessive use of Hindi words (not a problem for me!)

The book also serves as an interesting guide to the history of the drug trade in Bombay/Mumbai, as to how opium dens were the rage in the 1970s & then about a decade later, the entire business has ditched opium for newer substances such as garad (heroin) & 'Chemical' and finally with the advent of the 21st century, Rashidbhai's son Jamaal is selling cocaine to the city's rich folks. It's not entirely core to the plot, but is engrossing nonetheless. There are also some other references to events such as the 'Patthar Maar' serial killer & the 1993 Hindu-Muslim riots, which serve as a backdrop as the novel progresses.

What I also loved about it was the detour to China I mentioned earlier, primarily set during the early years of Communist China & how Mr. Lee's father, initially a popular novelist fades into oblivion when he writes his greatest & final piece of work named 'Prophecy'. Let me tell you this, I was blown away reading about this particular book (entirely fictional) & I think Jeet Thayil deserves high praise indeed for getting these small things right.

Thayil also explores themes such as freedom & free will with respect to drug addiction through a church sermon, where this book raises pertinent questions regarding how much of free will is involved when one indulges in drugs & whether one is really experiencing freedom in any real sense while getting high.

However, where this book doesn't work for me is the disconnect I felt with the characters. I guess it must be my prejudice towards those who are drug addicts & substance abusers, but I simply didn't feel anything for them despite their deprived lives & troubled minds.

I'm changing my initial rating & I give 3.5 to 4 stars to 'Narcopolis' by Jeet Thayil. Read it to experience the nostalgia around Bombay when it was still Bombay, besides the delightful prose & challenging narration. This is one book that's gonna grow on you over time. Recommended for fans of literary fiction.(less)

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Nov 27, 2012 Rishi Prakash rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There is always a hype once the book is shortlisted for Booker and the good part about is the wave it creates which obviously pushes the sales big time. There is also a bad part though which is the increase in the expectation after it! I went for this book because of the first event and obviously I was also having high expectations which definitely did not help!

Jeet Thayil was himself an addict for 20 years and hence the book is suppose to be an insider's account of Bombay's drug scene.

That Tha...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Aaron (Typographical Era) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, nook, man-booker-2012

From the opening word “Bombay” to the period at the end of its first sentence a full seven pages later, it’s clear that poet Jeet Thayil’s debut novel Narcopolis is anything but your standard piece of fiction. Set primarily in Bombay in the 1970s the novel bounces backwards and forwards through time as it attempts to document the lives of several drug addicts, drug pushers, and prostitutes. It’s not exactly the most happy, uplifting subject matter, but surprisingly it works, primarily because of...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a major disappointment. It started off strong; the opening tells you how competent the author is as a writer. Where the book fails, is in making you care about any of the characters, beyond a slight sympathy for Dimple. Most of the book is written from the point of view of one character or another who is about to get high/is high/is coming down from being high, and that vantage point gets tiresome really fast. We are taken in a no-holds-barred tour of the drug addict's life in Bombay, a...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Catherine Woodman rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the fifth Mann Booker 2012 longlist book that I have read--such fun to read them all, but a challenge when they are not all published in the US. Sometimes I find the books too cerebral, long on writing style and somewhat disappointing in terms of plot development and conclusion. This one does not dissapoint.

The book takes place largely in Bombay over the course of several decades, opening in the 1970's and closing in the early 21st century. The story is firmly entrenched in the seamier s...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Sruthy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Narcopolis opens up with some really vivid descriptions about Bombay, during a time when Opium dens and Heroin addicts prevailed and ruled the inner & under worlds. The story revolves around characters that dwell, live, love and die in these settlements that almost rule their entire lives. I've not read such a compelling story about addicts, where you get to know how they start trying it, get used to it,fall in love with it, how it runs in their blood and how they keep going back to it again...more

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21st Century Lite...: Prologue/Book One General Comments	25	31	1 hour, 47 min ago
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About Jeet Thayil

Jeet Thayil (born 1959 in Kerala) is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is best known as a poet and is the author of four collections: These Errors Are Correct (Tranquebar, 2008), English (2004, Penguin India, Rattapallax Press, New York, 2004), Apocalypso (Ark, 1997) and Gemini (Viking Penguin, 1992). His first novel, Narcopolis, (Faber & Faber, 2012), was shortlisted for t...more

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The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets

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“You've got to face facts and the fact is life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke. There's no point taking it seriously because whatever happens, and I mean whatever the fuck, the punch line is the same: you go out horizontally. You see the point? No fucking point.” — 12 people liked it

“Women are more evolved biologically and emotionally, that’s well known
and it’s obvious. But they confuse sex and the spirit; they don’t
separate. Men, as you know, always separate: they separate
their human and dog natures.” — 9 people liked it

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