''Narcopolis'' is the debut novel of Indian author

Jeet Thayil Jeet Thayil (born 1959) is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is the author of several poetry collections, including ''These Errors Are Correct'' (2008), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award. His first novel, '' Narcopolis,'' ( ...

, which was shortlisted for the

2012 Man Booker Prize The 2012 Booker Prize for Fiction was awarded on 16 October 2012. A longlist of twelve titles was announced on 25 July, and these were narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles, announced on 11 September. The jury was chaired by Sir Peter Stothar ...

. It is set in 1970s

Old Bombay South Mumbai, colloquially SoBo from South Bombay in Anglo-Indian English, administratively the Mumbai City District, is the city centre and the southernmost precinct of Greater Bombay. It extends from Colaba to Mahim and Sion neighbour ...

and concerns

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...

and its influence. The novel's narrator arrives in Bombay, where he becomes seduced into the opium underground. The story expands to encompass such characters as Dimple, a ''hijra'', Rashid, the opium house's owner, and Mr Lee, a former Chinese officer, all of whom have stories to tell.

Autobiography element

The novel draws on his own experiences as a drug addict, and what he calls "the lost 20 years of my life". it took him five years to write the novel, and he called it "the opposite of catharsis. Catharsis gets stuff out of you. But this put bad feelings into me." Thayil decided to call the book ''Narcopolis'' "because Bombay seemed to me a city of intoxication, where the substances on offer were drugs and alcohol, of course, but also god, glamour, power, money and sex".

Reception

Highly regarded as one of the leading postmodern poets of India, Thayil expertly weaves poetry and prose in this breakthrough work. According to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', "Narcopolis is a blistering debut that can indeed stand proudly on the shelf next to Burroughs and De Quincey."

References

{{reflist 2012 Indian novels English-language novels Novels set in the 1970s Novels set in Mumbai 2012 debut novels Works about opium Penguin Books India books