Narcopolis

About the Book: Narcopolis Shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and DSC Prize forSouth Asian Literature. A rich and hallucinatory novel, set around a Bombay opium den,that follows a fascinating cast of flawed characters as the citytransforms itself over three decades. 'Wait now, light me up so we do this right, yes, hold me steadyto the lamp, hold it, hold, good, a slow pull to start with, todraw the smoke low into the lungs, yes, oh my...' Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the airis thick with voices and ghosts: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. A youngwoman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair fallingacross her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. Here, theysay, you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. There is anunderworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stonekiller, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. In thebroken city, there are too many to count. Stretching across threedecades, with an interlude in Mao's China, it portrays a city incollision with itself. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets,gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworldwritten in electric and utterly original prose. About the Author: Jeet Thayil Jeet Thayil was born in Kerala, India in 1959 and educated inHong Kong, New York and Mumbai. He is a performance poet,songwriter and guitarist as well as a writer, and has publishedfour collections of poetry. He is the editor of 'The Bloodaxe Bookof Contemporary Indian Poets' (2008). The Buzz 'Completely fascinating and told with a feverish and furiousnecessity, Narcopolis cultivates for us a glorious world which issimultaneously fantastical yet highly realistic. Jeet Thayil haswritten a work we can place on our book shelves next to RobertoBolano, next to G.V. Desani and Hubert Selby.' - Alan Warner 'Stories unfold and hang in the air. They slide into each other,until you're not quite sure how long you've been reading. JeetThayil's Bombay is a city dreaming troubled