Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Narcopolis is a rich and hallucinatory novel set around a Bombay opium den, as the city transforms itself over three decades.
In Old Bombay, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. But in Rashid's opium room on Shuklaji Street, the air is thick with voices and ghosts. A young woman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. And now there is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. In broken Bombay, there are too many to count.
Stretching across three decades, with an interlude in Mao's China, Narcopolis portrays a city in collision with itself. 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.
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'Jeet Thayil's Bombay is a city dreaming troubled dreams, and Narcopolis will change the way you imagine it.' --Hari Kunzru
'Completely fascinating and told with a feverish and furious necessity.'
--Alan Warner
'This is a compelling, often exhilarating debut. Thayil deftly weaves the various narrative threads, and his overheated, hypertrophied prose invites comparison with the greatest of all narco-novels: William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.' Financial Times
'At its best beautifully written, inventive and clear-eyed, Narcopolis deserves to be read and acclaimed.' Times Literary Supplement
'An evocative portrait ... Thayil's depiction of the addicts' slow disintegration until they become 'damaged strangers' and 'inanimate objects', even to themselves, is devastating' --New Statesman
'I wished that this book, like some long and delicious opium-induced daydream, would go on and on ... Narcopolis is a blistering debut that can indeed stand proudly on the shelf next to Burroughs and De Quincey.' --Guardian
'Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil plumbs the world of substance addiction with a feverish imaginative power. Written with a poet s eye for economy, its generous and unflinching vision drifts between dream, nightmare, and the sprawling real world of Mumbai that the characters struggle to inhabit. This journey is also a narrative of language and ideas, but what makes Narcopolis a truly great book is its compassion and hard-earned wisdom.' --Krys Lee, Financial Times Books of the Year
'This is a compelling, often exhilarating debut. Thayil deftly weaves the various narrative threads, and his overheated, hypertrophied prose invites comparison with the greatest of all narco-novels: William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.' Financial Times
'At its best beautifully written, inventive and clear-eyed, Narcopolis deserves to be read and acclaimed.' Times Literary Supplement
'an evocative portrait ... Thayil's depiction of the addicts' slow disintegration until they become "damaged strangers" and "inanimate objects", even to themselves, is devastating' --New Statesman
'I wished that this book, like some long and delicious opium-induced daydream, would go on and on ... Narcopolis is a blistering debut that can indeed stand proudly on the shelf next to Burroughs and De Quincey.' --Guardian
'Captures the Bombay underworld of the 1970s in all its intoxicating, poetic squalor.' --Observer
'Thayil's prose is masterful.' --Irish Independent
'I wished that this book, like some long and delicious opium-induced daydream, would go on and on ... Narcopolis is a blistering debut that can indeed stand proudly on the shelf next to Burroughs and De Quincey.' --Guardian
'Dreamy and energetic prose.' --Independent
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Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780571275786
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Wait now, light me up so we do this right, yes, hold me steady to the lamp, hold it, hold, good, a slow pull to start with, to draw the smoke low into the lungs, yes, oh my.Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick with voices and ghosts: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. A young woman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. Here, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. In the broken city, there are too many to count. Stretching across three decades, with an interlude in Mao's China, it portrays a city in collision with itself. 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. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Narcopolis is a rich and hallucinatory novel set around a Bombay opium den, as the city transforms itself over three decades. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780571275786
Book Description Condition: New. 2013. Main. Paperback. In Old Bombay, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. But in Rashid's opium room on Shuklaji Street, the air is thick with voices and ghosts. A young woman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. Num Pages: 304 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 199 x 127 x 19. Weight in Grams: 232. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780571275786
Book Description Condition: New. 2013. Main. Paperback. In Old Bombay, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. But in Rashid's opium room on Shuklaji Street, the air is thick with voices and ghosts. A young woman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. Num Pages: 304 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 199 x 127 x 19. Weight in Grams: 232. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # V9780571275786
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 304 pages. 7.80x4.96x0.75 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0571275788
Book Description Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Narcopolis is a rich and hallucinatory novel set around a Bombay opium den, as the city transforms itself over three decades.In Old Bombay, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. But in Rashid's opium room on Shuklaji Street, the air is thick with voices and ghosts. A young woman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. And now there is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. In broken Bombay, there are too many to count. Stretching across three decades, with an interlude in Mao's China, Narcopolis portrays a city in collision with itself. 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. 304 pp. Deutsch. Seller Inventory # 9780571275786
Book Description Condition: New. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Narcopolis is a rich and hallucinatory novel set around a Bombay opium den, as the city transforms itself over three decades. In Old Bombay, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.Shortlisted for th. Seller Inventory # 5939421