Narcopolis
by Jeet Thayil
- Percentage of approved critics who have given this book a positive review.
Critic Rating
66%
Critic Reviews: 25
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- User rating from iDreamBooks & iTunes
Reader Rating
71%
Reader Ratings: 71
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Synopsis
A fantastical portrait of the beautiful and damned residents of an opium den and brothel in the underworld of BombayBombay, which obliterated its own history by changing its name and surgically altering its face, is the hero or heroin of this story...Jeet Thayil's luminous debut novel completely subverts and challenges the literary traditions for which the Indian novel is celebrated. This is a book about drugs, sex, death, perversion, addiction, love, and... more
About Jeet Thayil
- All Critics: 25
- Positive: 18
- Negative: 7
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AV Club | 23 Apr 2012
Without glamorizing the effects of heroin on Rashid’s market, Thayil locks his characters into their courses and stays with them through their lowest moments.
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The Guardian | 17 Feb 2012
Narcopolis is a blistering debut that can indeed stand proudly on the shelf next to Burroughs and De Quincey.
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The Independent | 2 Mar 2012
The ingenuity of Thayil's novel lies in how he has squeezed this entire universe into an opium pipe.
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Reading on a Rainy Day | 15 May 2012
It was unconventional, it was different, and it was just as stimulating and entrancing as the characters found themselves to be in after smoking opium. And that is this book's strength.
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The Telegraph | 8 Feb 2012
Thayil creates something original and vital from those blueprints. One yearns for the next hit.
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sen city | 19 Feb 2012
and this ambitious Narcopolis is left teetering as the writer keeps scrabbling to find room (in a hovel-novel crammed with characters, backstories and dreams) to roll up his unprosaic sleeves and work in another sensationally gaspworthy guitar riff, and the result is painful as each of the book’s undoubtedly colourful multiple narrators...look at the world with the very same open-mouthed sense of wonder
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DNA | 12 Feb 2012
It is primarily because Jeet Thayil’s shallow, pretentious, pseudo-erudite, gratuitously arcane authorial persona invades the narrative and never lets it go.
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Of Books and Reading | 9 Jan 2012
The writing is packed with punches and more. It will not make you want to keep the book down at any point.
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What She Read | 10 May 2012
Lyrical, cadenced, it's the work of a poet-cum-novelist without doubt.
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Raging Bibliomania | 19 Apr 2012
Thayil’s rendering of this book is very skillful, but as a reader, I kept wondering what the ultimate message of the book was.
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The Year in Books | 16 Apr 2012
It's unique, a one of a kind book filled with passion; it's gritty and tough, real and surreal all at the same time.
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Hindustan Times | 30 Dec 2011
He melds the puke, the violence, the tawdry glamour, and the terrible beauty of the Narcopolis together and transmutes it into what smells like instant cult classic.
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The Economist | 4 Feb 2012
he is also a published poet, who wields his words with care. His efforts are there to be seen.
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DSC South Asian Literature Festival
Perhaps due to Thayil’s background as a musician and poet, Narcopolisis rich with feeling and atmosphere but weak in plot – at times the narrative seems contrived.
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Conceptual Reception | 30 Apr 2012
"Narcopolis" can feel overwhelming at times, with its flood of verbiage and unfamiliar terminology and transitions.
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Publishers Weekly | 20 Feb 2012
Thayil’s precision and economy distill what could be a sprawling and uneven saga into an elegant tapestry of beautifully observed characters and their complex lives.
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India Today | 28 Jan 2012
Language for Jeet, for his alter egos, his characters, is a weapon and a warrior, a blade and a ballad, a source and a scourge. He writes as if the word was, is, truly god or gods.
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The Sunday Guardian | 8 Jan 2012
All this poignant coincidence and divine justice might have been okay in a movie but in a powerful book like this, these moments appear a touch tacky and unnecessary.
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BookTrust
This is a poetic book about vice and desperation, and a truly exceptional debut.
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A Novel Source | 26 Apr 2012
The manner in which Jeeta Thayil forms his sentences, makes every word sound like liquid gold is almost transcendent.
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Unabridged Chick | 19 Apr 2012
Every few pages I came across a passage that was just beautiful -- my copy is tagged with three dozen flags marking lines I found captivating -- and I think anyone who loves gorgeous writing and is interested in exploring an unusual narrative should give this one a try.
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Book Geeks | 31 Jan 2012
Narcopolis represents a truly international work of fiction: influenced by and sitting comfortably alongside western works such as Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, yet possessing a quintessentially Indian sensibility that suggests more than a simple crude shift of time or place.
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Businessworld | 21 Feb 2012
Thayil viscerally cracks open the underbelly of Bombay... This is rock solid writing about the fragility of the human mind. It shows how a good telling of a tale can create lively literature.
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The Telegraph (India) | 3 Feb 2012
In the end, you are left with a wan novel, the confessions of a reformed opium-eater. A novel that disappears in a wisp of smoke the moment you close the book.
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Bookmunch | 7 Mar 2012
His evocative language brings a beauty to the darkness within the text and within his characters. Narcopolis is also a genuine page-turner, the kind of novel that you can get comfortably lost in.
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