Short-listed for the 2012 Booker Prize, Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis is a period read of a different kind. Set in the opium dens of Old Bombay (now Souther Mumbai), with an underworld of pimps and gangsters it’s a smokey blast from the past that sounds like the dark heart of a dangerous time.
Narcopolis was originally released as a large edition paperback in February 2012, and it’s taken a year for it to scale down to the less expensive edition that will be released in early February 2013. With the Booker Prize shortlist under its belt, it’s bound to be a must read next year for anyone that missed it the first time around.
The Bombay setting seems romantic in a strange way when you read the synopsis, but the dark underbelly of the three decade long story is clear. Taking in the heroin addled world of Rashid’s opium room, people from all walks of life and culture come together under the auspices of their shared mutual need.
However, on the dark streets of Suklaji Street, the opium room sits in the middle of an even more sinister world with a killer on the loose called Pathar Maar, who terrorises the poor people of the street. It’s a backdrop to in city of the 70s and 80s when cheaper heroin moved in on the market that opium had previously cornered.
The story is as much about the city itself as it is about the people and animals that roam it, casting it as a place that crushes under its weight. Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis is an enthralling novel about the sinister past of India’s most populous city. With such a unique storyline and the poetic words that caught the eye of the Booker Prize judges, it could be a great read to sink into before the vague traces of sunshine return for spring.
The book is Jeet Thayil’s first novel, despite a long history in poetry, but if this is how he he does novels, maybe the poetry he’d previously been known for can wait.
You can order Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis from blackwell.co.uk.
