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Narcopolis Jeet Thayil
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

Jeet Thayil, a published poet and sometime musician, had enough time to bask in the attention in the heady few weeks after making it to the Booker shortlist for 2012. The 'Narcopolis' of the title is (Old) Bombay of the late 1970s and the novel's setting is an opium den and a brothel in the underbelly of that city. (Congratulations to Jeet Thayil for being shortlisted for the ManBooker Prize yesterday. Narcopolis is a book that you should certainly own if you are attracted to the darker side of life. Jamie Delano is back in the game. I am reproducing a review and an interview with him that was published earlier in the year.) Baptised into One Body. Writing and writers in India, Jeet Thayil and his debut novel Narcopolis, David Davidar and his novel Ithaca, literary agent David Godwin. Spanning the course of a few decades, Jeet Thayil's debut novel, Narcopolis, guides readers through a dreamlike exploration of Bombay's seedy brothels and opium dens. Thayil-Narcopolis.jpg Jeet Thayil's luminous debut novel completely subverts and challenges the literary traditions for which the Indian novel is celebrated. Narcopolis is about drugs, specifically but not exclusively opium, though if you hadn't worked that out from the cover or title I'm not sure there's much more to be gained from continuing this conversation. Dom records his recollections and dreams as he drifts on a cloud of opium each night, back in the city of Bombay (he eschews the modern name Mumbai) which is home but increasingly unfamiliar to him. Right off the top of my head I would like to say that this book is not for everybody. Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (2012, 307 pages) Jeet Thayil's (Kerala, India, 1959) debut novel, Narcopolis, is the only work by an author from India long listed for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil is set in Bombay during the 1970s. Nacropolis the winner of DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2013 is all about drugs and the place as suggested in the title itself. Jeet Thayil's debut novel Narcopolis on pre-order on Infibeam. I feel a bit more kindly towards Narcopolis (very little) after finishing it, in the sense that perhaps I now understand what he was trying to do, also comprehension has dawned as to why the hullaboo off shores about this book.