Identify Books Supposing Narcopolis
| Original Title: | Narcopolis |
| ISBN: | 0571275761 (ISBN13: 9780571275762) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://www.faber.co.uk/work/narcopolis/9780571275762/ |
| Literary Awards: | Booker Prize Nominee (2012), Man Asian Literary Prize Nominee (2012), The Hindu Literary Prize Nominee (2012), DSC Prize for South Asian Literature (2013) |
Jeet Thayil
Paperback | Pages: 292 pages Rating: 3.36 | 7593 Users | 764 Reviews
Present Out Of Books Narcopolis
| Title | : | Narcopolis |
| Author | : | Jeet Thayil |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 292 pages |
| Published | : | February 2nd 2012 by Faber & Faber (first published January 31st 2012) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. India |
Description As Books Narcopolis
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 the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.
Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.
Rating Out Of Books Narcopolis
Ratings: 3.36 From 7593 Users | 764 ReviewsJudgment Out Of Books Narcopolis
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,I wonder if it is that to get a book published when you're an Indian ex-pat author, it needs to be really, really good. I suspect that may be the case, but I have to say that by far and large, the books I've read by authors (mostly men) who come from India have been just so good. Dynamic, interesting, compelling, often very difficult. It'll be a mark of progress when you don't have to be this good to get published, when mediocrity is allowed you the same as it is allowed white authors, but at
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,
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
As Mark Staniforth, fellow Shadow Juror for the Man Asian Literary Prize, wittily remarked in his review, its a fair guess that Jeet Thayils Narcopolis is unlikely to nudge its way onto Oprahs summer reading list any time soon. This tale from the underbelly of 1970s Bombay is about as squalid as it can get. But longlisted it for the 2012 Booker, and now shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize it is strangely compelling, luring the reader in, mimicking the way opium seduces the books
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
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,
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