NARCOPOLIS by Jeet Thayil

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

Review

Narcopolis joins the array of novels bold, revealing the life below the surface of the beautiful thriving old city, Bombay. It deals with drugs and addiction, sex and love, violence and perversion, god and death. Not the type of raw book I would chose to read ten years ago. I have grown up.

A varied cast populates the unfurling opium smoke – a murderer, businessmen, pimps, prostitutes, thugs, poets, painters, all drowning in degradation, lust and crime. We are drawn into a languorous world of shocking low life in and around Rashid’s opium house on Shuklaji Street sometime in the 1970s, place of alleyways, and villages and old buidlings. We meet Dimple, the eunuch who prepares the pipes for the regular clients, the preparation an art like a sacred tea ceremony. He shows up as a beautiful lady who enjoys reading, goes to the cinema to watch lengthy Bollywood movies and listens to stories Mr Lee relates. Mr Lee, a Chinese refugee, a former soldier who fled communist China brings us a glimpse of the Mao era. Gritty Rashid, owner of the den, protects his family, especially his young son, from exposure to low life of drugs and alcohol and prostitution.

The drifting characters give the novel a historical perspective as it moves in a haze with the arrival of hippies and an international groups seeking cheap solace. Indian politics and religious uprisings and violence are touched upon.

The tale moves to the present. After an absence the narrator returns to find a very different Bombay (Mumbai) in 2004. He comes seeking his friend Rashid, and others he knew. The old place has disappeared giving way to proper roads and tall steel and glass buildings. He manages to contact his friend now old and sad and disillusioned and under the control of his educated son. His son a fervent Muslim with flexible morals sells cocaine to the infidels, associates with women, and enjoys porn magazines. If necessary he might consider becoming a suicide bomber.

Narcopolis read on the Kindle

I found the novel stark, tragic and beautiful except when the focus shifted to China and Mao. I found this section trailing into distraction.

Author Jeet Thayil

The author, Jeet Thayil, a poet, had at one time succumbed to addiction.

Man Booker prize short list

Jeet Thayil Narcoplis
Hilary Mantel Bringing Up the Bodies
Tan Twan Eng (one of my favourite writers) The Garden of Evening Mists
Deborah Levy Swimming Home
Will Self Umbrella
Alison Moore The Lighthouse