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    Narcopolis
    Narcopolis
    Narcopolis
    Audiobook8 hours

    Narcopolis

    Written by Jeet Thayil

    Narrated by Robertson Dean

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook



    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 god, and has more in common in its subject matter with the work of
    William S. Burroughs or Baudelaire than with the subcontinent's familiar
    literary lights. Above all, it is a fantastical portrait of a beautiful and
    damned generation in a nation about to sell its soul. Written in Thayil's
    poetic and affecting prose, Narcopolis charts the evolution of a great and
    broken metropolis. Narcopolis opens in Bombay in the late 1970s, as its
    narrator first arrives from New York to find himself entranced with the city's
    underworld, in particular an opium den and attached brothel. A cast of
    unforgettably degenerate and magnetic characters works and patronizes the
    venue, including Dimple, the eunuch who makes pipes in the den; Rumi, the
    salaryman and husband whose addiction is violence; Newton Xavier, the
    celebrated painter who both rejects and craves adulation; Mr. Lee, the Chinese
    refugee and businessman; and a cast of poets, prostitutes, pimps, and
    gangsters.

    Decades pass to reveal a changing Bombay, where opium has
    given way to heroin from Pakistan and the city's underbelly has become ever
    rawer. Those in their circle still use sex for their primary release and
    recreation, but the violence of the city on the nod and its purveyors have
    moved from the fringes to the center of their lives. Yet Dimple, despite the
    bleakness of her surroundings, continues to search for beauty-at the movies, in
    pulp magazines, at church, and in a new burka-wearing identity.



    After a long absence, the narrator returns in 2004 to
    find a very different Bombay. Those he knew are almost all gone, but the
    passion he feels for them and for the city is revealed.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 16, 2012
    ISBN9781452680361
    Narcopolis

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    Reviews for Narcopolis

    3.5/5

    146 ratings13 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Jeet Thayil's novel Narcopolis is the story of Bombay, the old city that changed its name and destroyed part of its history. It is told from the point of view of a man who travels to the city from New York in the 1970s. He is fascinated by the poor areas where criminals provide drugs and prostitution as an alternative way of life for a variety of Indian people. The common denominator of these people is psychological physical pain. Sex and intoxication disconnect the neurons from the individuals' pain receptors. In this depiction of Bombay, many residents have found a life of the senses in rhythm with the life of the old city.The underworld is accepting of characters who deviate radically from normal expectations. These marginalized souls include an opium den operator, a transgender opium pipe preparer, a violent day worker and family man who visits the den, an alcoholic artist who acts out the expectations of deviance by his admirers, a Chinese expatriate businessman mourning the loss of his culture, and other survivors determined to connect without pain to the immediate life of the subcontinent, the mysterious Eastern metropolis of Bombay.Although the old Bombay and its people seem doomed to the squalor of small lives and little motivation to improve their lot, there is remarkable freedom for the adventurous in the life of the immediate senses and easy gratification of desires. There is plenty of opportunity for consideration of morality, religion, art, personal responsibility, reincarnation, violence, rebellion, and the soaring illusion of freedom induced by intoxication. It is all there in the ancient city for people with the courage to immerse themselves in its uplifting and destructive life. The visitor is seduced by the city and comes to understand that it demands that free people give affection to those who need it, and everyone in Bombay regardless of caste needs it.Opium is the symbol of the old Bombay in the novel. Using it is a slow, ritual process that involves a camaraderie and acceptance of others that fosters some mutual affection for all involved. When the visitor rehabs and leaves the old Bombay, he loses track of the life of the city. Revisiting the new city, Mumbai, in the first decade of the 21st Century, heroin from Pakistan has become the new symbol. Its use involves an isolated process that is quick and desperate interfering with the affectionate bonds that were part of ritual opium use. The visitor sees that the city forgot its past and became a place of immediate but dissociative life. Without time to give and receive affection, the incidence of violence, cruelty, and artless tearing down and rebuilding parts of the renamed city has stolen its mysterious life force in the eyes of the returning visitor.Narcopolis reminds me of The Alexandria Quartet Boxed Set by Lawrence Durrell in which characters try to understand the life force of the great city of Alexandria as it changes over the time of their interacting lives. This is a very interesting novel especially in its description of characters who believe that the pulse of the city is like the perpetual high that they seek with chemicals. Ultimately, these truth seekers are overwhelmed by the power of the city and the limits of their understanding of their futile quest to be free of pain.
    • 4/5
      Read this aloud and loved the poetic flow of the language, the disjointed drugged and slightly surreal narrative, the achingly poignant characterizations, and the general milieu of Bombay. It was surprising empathetic and insightful about drugs and addiction, about the kinds of insights one can gain and the costs those insights can incur. But I am not from Bombay, not an Indian, and despite the wealth of Google search, still could not figure out some of the local terms and references. So like poetry, it is best if you just surf the language and let yourself go with the flow...
    • 4/5
      This is a book about corruption. It reads like an opium dream with stories sliding over each other, vivid and hungry language and occasional moments of stark lucidity. The effect is carefully deployed so that form meets function. It has a nostalgic feel and unfortunately deploys the old 'past is a better place' cliche. Like many books on addiction, its moralizing is hidden beneath sudden lurches into violence and a sub-plot involving a serial murderer is somewhat forced in. The language, like the drug, is exciting, languid and poetic.
    • 2/5
      That Narcopolis is not like the average work of fiction becomes apparent almost immediately. The book opens with a prologue consisting of only one sentence. A seven page sentence. The prologue was actually my favorite part, because it is so beautifully crafted. I read it to myself silently once and then aloud, and it really does have a great rhythm to it.

      The book calls to mind, not the first time a book has done so since I've maintained this blog, my class on counterculture, which focused primarily on the Beats, but also included authors like William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller. Narcopolis definitely has a bit of the feel of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, although with an Indian flair, perhaps influences of Salman Rushdie (although since I have not actually had time to read one of his books all the way through yet, I can not say that for sure, but the opening did remind me of his style in what I read of Midnight's Children).

      I was not a big fan of most of the books I read in my counterculture class. Had I had the blog back then, most of them would have been rated a 2 or lower, with the exceptions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, perhaps Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and an Andy Warhol book. Narcopolis I definitely enjoyed more than most. Like Fear and Loathing, much of the book is about existing in a drug-soaked haze, and the crazy things that happen as a result, however, other sections are amazingly clear-headed, concise philosophy and observations on the human condition.

      Perhaps I do not need to point out that this is not a book for someone easily offended by, well, most things. There's a lot of drug-doing obviously, sex, violence, and swearing. Although I usually don't go too quote crazy, I'm going to include a couple here to show you examples of the insightful moments I found so moving, as well as to allow you to get a sense of Thayil's style.

      " 'My religion is no way of knowing me.' " (214)

      "Drugs are a bad habit, so why do it? Because, said Dimple, it isn't the heroin that we're addicted to, it's the drama of the life, the chaos of it, that's the real addiction and we never get over it; and because when you come down to it, the high life, that is, the intoxicated life, is the best of the limited options offered." (228-9)

      I especially adore that quote in reference to religion. Maybe it should have been my favorite, but, really, there were a lot of amazing bits in here. So, basically, don't let my relatively low rating scare you away. I'm not really the perfect audience for this, what with not being remotely interested in drugs and not being a huge fan of counterculture literature. Even with that in mind, though, I can heartily recommend this with a clear conscience to anyone who liked reading those things.
    • 2/5
      The prologue’s confusing, dreamlike feel both frustrated and intrigued me at the same time—it was confusing, yes, but it was also pretty poetic. Yet on that day, frustration won out and I put it down. I was sorely tempted not to go back to it, but as one of the few Booker long-listed titles that sounded mildly interesting to me, I gave it another shot later in the week. Thankfully, the rest of the book is much more straightforward, for lack of a better word. In one of the reviews, someone commented that there are so many characters that they couldn’t keep track of everyone, but I didn’t find that to be the case at all.

      The stories that were the most engaging—though I wish the author delved even deeper—were related to Dimple, the hijra, and Mr. Lee, the Chinese man that she befriends. Yet, the stories of all of the characters’ lives didn’t really cohere. Even then, I didn’t mind it so much because I could still treat it as short stories to enjoy individually; plus Thayil was great at capturing the seedy feel of Bombay during that time and that went a long way in keeping me going. Things started to fall apart in the last one or two chapters—they were boring and I started to get the sense that the author was trying too hard to ram his messages in before the end in a not-so-subtle or poetic way. I get that Thayil was trying to give a portrait of a changing city, but the attempt fell short in this book. However, I still have warm feelings towards the novel because it’s evident that Thayil has a lot of potential as a storyteller, even if this first novel of his was an imperfect effort.
    • 5/5
      This was a gorgeous book, beautifully written, subtle, alinear without being about alinearity, with characters that drift in and out of focus and even become one another. I thought it was magical. People either play up its grittiness (which is present, but not really what the book is about) or don't know how to give in to it, I think - it takes most of the book to realize what a remarkable work it is. I loved it and am so glad I read it.
    • 3/5
      How to review this book? I have to begin by saying that I didn't like it, didn't like it at all. At times I got the merest glimpse of what people might see in it, but the merest glimpse only which disappeared as soon as it had come. I wouldn't have finished reading it if I hadn't been determined to finish the Booker shortlist books this year and I certainly don't want to read anything by the same author. The book dips in and out of the lives of the denizens of Rashid's khana or opium den on Shuklaji Street in Bombay/ Mumbai, and the street and the city are as important a character in the book as they change almost out of recognition from the late 1970's when the book starts to its end in 2004. As are the drugs, changing from the traditional opium to heroin to cocaine and more modern drugs by the end. Characters appear, are followed for a few pages, and then drop out of sight, sometimes to reappear later or sometimes not. Rashid himself whose khana, at one time almost an unofficial tourist attraction of the city, is overtaken by the decline in the popularity of opium. Newton Xavier, the ageing wild child of Indian painting and poetry who turns up to his own poetry reading event too drunk to stand. Mr Lee, a refugee from communist China, who runs a khana so secretive that it is thought to be a myth. Rumi, the cowboy-booted high caste Hindu who despite his education and family connections finds himself falling towards the bottom rungs of society. And Dimple, by far the most interesting character, the Hijra or eunuch prostitute sold by her mother at the age of nine, who tends the pipes at Rashid's and longs to read anything she can lay her hands on. So why didn't I like it? I suppose I have to say that reading about the heroin addicts of Bombay isn't really my comfort zone, but in the main I didn't like it because I found the book boring. While the idea of the teeming city and streets was very well described, the individual characters themselves didn't really engage my interest. The narrative frequently goes off at a tangent: sometimes a short diversion into people's dreams and poems (most of which seem to deal with the end of the world), and sometimes much longer as when there is a fifty page interlude where Mr Lee relates his life history (and that of his father and mother) in great detail. I can see that this relates to the semi-dreamlike state in which the characters find themselves with the opium, and there are connections to be made between the dreams and reality, but it does seem to go on and on. And there is some fairly violent sex which I found unpleasant, especially in the light of thinking about recent events in India.I considered giving this only ** but have settled on **1/2 at the moment as I can see that it has literary merit even if it is not at all to my taste. The writing at times is beautiful but in an overblown sort of way with words pouring out everywhere: again not for me as I prefer a simpler writing style where it feels like every word has been carefully chosen. It is a complex book and I'm sure I would understand more on a second reading, but that is something that I definitely won't be devoting the time to.
    • 3/5
      Being a fan of the drugalog and wanting to see what a short-listed Booker Prize nominee read like, I picked up this book. I put it down a few times and finally could not pick it up again to finish it.Dimple is an engaging enough character, and I did care about her. But not enough to finish the book.I have no idea why this one was short-listed for Booker; perhaps the committee wanted to give Thayil encouragement for his novel. I understand his previous works were poetry. I think if you've actually been to Bombay, this book will hold something for you. For this reader, though, the book didn't hold.
    • 3/5
      20. Pearl Ruled: [NARCOPOLIS] by [[JEET THAYIL]]Rating: 3* of five (p129)The Book Description: 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 god, and has more in common in its subject matter with the work of William S. Burroughs or Baudelaire than with the subcontinent’s familiar literary lights. Above all, it is a fantastical portrait of a beautiful and damned generation in a nation about to sell its soul. Written in Thayil’s poetic and affecting prose, Narcopolis charts the evolution of a great and broken metropolis.Narcopolis opens in Bombay in the late 1970s, as its narrator first arrives from New York to find himself entranced with the city’s underworld, in particular an opium den and attached brothel. A cast of unforgettably degenerate and magnetic characters works and patronizes the venue, including Dimple, the eunuch who makes pipes in the den; Rumi, the salaryman and husband whose addiction is violence; Newton Xavier, the celebrated painter who both rejects and craves adulation; Mr. Lee, the Chinese refugee and businessman; and a cast of poets, prostitutes, pimps, and gangsters.Decades pass to reveal a changing Bombay, where opium has given way to heroin from Pakistan and the city’s underbelly has become ever rawer. Those in their circle still use sex for their primary release and recreation, but the violence of the city on the nod and its purveyors have moved from the fringes to the center of their lives. Yet Dimple, despite the bleakness of her surroundings, continues to search for beauty—at the movies, in pulp magazines, at church, and in a new burka-wearing identity.After a long absence, the narrator returns in 2004 to find a very different Bombay. Those he knew are almost all gone, but the passion he feels for them and for the city is revealed. My Review: I am really sorry I read this book immediately after The Yellow Birds wrung me out, shook me wrinkle-free, and threw me in the dryer on the “Sahara in the Summer” setting. I didn't have it to give. There's a weird and wonderful book in here. I am too tired to go look for it.I lost the will to live in the book's world at the end of book two, “The Story of the Pipe.” Actually, I lost it on p125:Dimple made Rashid's pipe the way she always did, calm and silent, her hands steady, while the tai drank her tea, made her speech, and left. That afternoon, Rashid took Dimple to a room on a half landing between the khana and the first floor, where his family lived. There was a wooden cot, a chair and washstand, a window with a soiled curtain. She knew what he wanted. She took off her salvaar and folded it on the back of the chair. She lay on the cot and puller her kameez up to her shoulders to show him her breasts. Her legs were open, the ridged skin stretched like a ghost vagina.He said, you're like a woman. She said, I am a woman, see for yourself.(p125, US hardcover edition)*ping The tolerance timer went off. Dimple, you see, is a eunuch, not a woman, and I am sorry if it offends, but mens is mens and gurlz is gurlz in my universe, no matter they say they're not.Transphobic of me, I suppose. I'd remind those who coined that term for us'ns who don't like to make that particular leap of the fact that there is no obvious link between same-sex sexual attraction and gender dysphoria. I am not unhappy I am a man, I am delighted by it; and having experienced the very meager joys of heterosexuality (out of bed, in bed's perfectly adequate if predictable and unexciting), I am rapturously homosexual. I don't see how this in any conceivable (!) way aligns me with some poor person who knows with every fiber of his/her being that the genitals on the body they're in aren't the correct ones for his/her inner truth.No one seems prepared to do more than snort angrily at me when I say this. Explanations aren't forthcoming. So I steam along like the QEII, big and old-fashioned and terribly behind the times.C'est ma vie.So these factors combine to make this well-written and most interesting story a non-starter for me. In another mood, perhaps I would've gone with it and found its unique beauties more positively interesting and less snort-and-eyeroll inducing. Considering how very many books there are awaiting my attention, I suspect I won't be coming back to this one.
    • 4/5
      In this opiate-veiled book, Thayil introduces readers to the seedy underbelly of Bombay. It begins in the 1970's and transitions with surreality into modern-day Mumbai--which has lost not only its tradition and identity, but also it's name. The story follows several memorable characters, all of whom fight addiction in one form or another. Addictions range from opiates to violence to sex to adulation. The most memorable character IMO is Dimple, a pipe-wallah, a prostitute, and an addict. Dimple's character is rather horrifying to the unjaded Westerner because she was abandoned by her mother and sold into prostitution as a child. At the age of 9, she was castrated and her penis was removed, which apparently makes her into a deliciously seedy prostitute (in the eyes of creepy men who make me shudder). When we are introduced to her, she is a little older, and is suffering some of the ill affects of her surgery--including addiction to opium, which was originally given to her as a narcotic for her pain. We watch Dimple as she changes from a beautiful young woman to a sickly and shriveled middle-aged woman. Perhaps I'm reading too much in to the story (I think it would be clearer after a second reading, which it's not going to get), but I think Dimple was meant to represent India. When we met Dimple, she was young and beautiful, as was the young India. She had been docked and gelded, yes, but she was beautiful, intelligent, and had potential if ONLY she could get out of her rut. Perhaps this is meant to imply that the Westerners had "docked and gelded" India (by their colonization and then partitioning of the land), but that she still had potential. She was still beautiful. But time passed, and the slow-and-easy opium life in the "best opium den in Bombay...maybe even India," was forcibly supplanted by frightening hallucinatory "cheap" chemical-laced heroin. During this time, Dimple became increasingly sick. Likewise, India itself was getting sicker from the negative influences of modernization. As time passed, Dimple's name changed, as did Bombay's, and their identities were lost in the harsh new world.This book was allegorically very deep, and I'm sure that a second, third, and fourth reading would teach me something new every time. But, unfortunately, once was enough for me. I don't regret reading the book...it will stay with me forever. But the violence, sex, drugs, and sickening human condition described was enough for me the first time around. Don't get me wrong, all of these negative issues were handled with graceful tact. But it was still difficult for me to read. Now, a note on the narration: I imagine this book was a very difficult one to read aloud. Robertson chose to represent surreal quality behind the veil with an airy tone of detachment. This detachment makes the narration less-than-enticing. However, this is not the narrator's fault, but an issue with the book itself. I think a tone of detachment was probably quite appropriate in this situation. Just be warned...if you're picky about narrations, then this book may be better read silently. :) On the other hand, if you're reasonably tolerant, like I am, then you should be able to delve into the story with no problems. Robertson's tone of detachment didn't distract from the story, once I got used to it and understood the purpose. I was happily able to engross myself in the flow. AND a nice? thing about the audiobook is that I apparently missed a 6-paged sentence. I didn't even notice it. ;)
    • 4/5
      Half the time I wasn't sure what was happening in this intoxicating novel. Of course, that fits with the theme, setting, and content, as most of the events occur in opium dens, brothels, and the poverty-baked streets of Bombay from the 1970s to the 1990s. It's clear that Thayil was drawing upon his own experiences as an addict; only one who had experienced the sensation of smoking opium or injecting heroin, or gone through the agony of withdrawal from those addictive substances, could have described them the way that he did. This is no glorification of drug use nor an apology for its exotic and erotic appeal. It's simply a story and the characters are memorable. My favorite is Dimple, the gender bending eunuch who was forcibly docked and gelded at age 9 and turned into a prostitute who sets up opium pipes for customers in the den. The narration is, by turns, confusing, vulgar, and beautiful. It probably deserves more than 3.5 stars; I suspect it would earn more with a second reading (which I'm not going to give it).
    • 3/5
      Narcopolis opens in Bombay in the 1970s. The narrator is a frequent customer at an opium den that has an attached brothel. Dimple, a eunuch, works making pipes in the den and in the brothel. The den has other regular customers besides the narrator – artists, family men, and gangsters. Narcopolis follows these characters through the decades as opium gives way to heroin from Pakistan.This book had a different style from most of the books I read. The writing is dreamily hazy – making the reader feel like what the people on drugs must feel like a lot of the time. The time-line was hard to keep straight and sometimes it took me a few sentences to figure out which character the author was writing about. I think this was purposeful though to achieve the drugged up atmosphere.Narcopolis starts with a prologue that is one six and half page run-on sentence. This had me a little worried, if the whole book was written like that I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Luckily, the rest of the book is not like that so don’t let the prologue scare you away.The author is a poet and that comes through in his prose. He almost romanticizes the era of the opium den. When heroin is introduced to Bombay, everyone’s lives start to fall apart. It’s much more addictive and renders the user much less functional than opium. Everyone lives a life of melancholy and some live lives of total despair.Narcopolis is not for everyone. If you enjoy poetry and character driven novels you will probably enjoy this book. If you like a straight forward, linear plot than this book might not be for you.
    • 4/5
      Jeet Thayil's novel Narcopolis is the story of Bombay, the old city that changed its name and destroyed part of its history. It is told from the point of view of a man who travels to the city from New York in the 1970s. He is fascinated by the poor areas where criminals provide drugs and prostitution as an alternative way of life for a variety of Indian people. The common denominator of these people is psychological physical pain. Sex and intoxication disconnect the neurons from the individuals' pain receptors. In this depiction of Bombay, many residents have found a life of the senses in rhythm with the life of the old city.The underworld is accepting of characters who deviate radically from normal expectations. These marginalized souls include an opium den operator, a transgender opium pipe preparer, a violent day worker and family man who visits the den, an alcoholic artist who acts out the expectations of deviance by his admirers, a Chinese expatriate businessman mourning the loss of his culture, and other survivors determined to connect without pain to the immediate life of the subcontinent, the mysterious Eastern metropolis of Bombay.Although the old Bombay and its people seem doomed to the squalor of small lives and little motivation to improve their lot, there is remarkable freedom for the adventurous in the life of the immediate senses and easy gratification of desires. There is plenty of opportunity for consideration of morality, religion, art, personal responsibility, reincarnation, violence, rebellion, and the soaring illusion of freedom induced by intoxication. It is all there in the ancient city for people with the courage to immerse themselves in its uplifting and destructive life. The visitor is seduced by the city and comes to understand that it demands that free people give affection to those who need it, and everyone in Bombay regardless of caste needs it.Opium is the symbol of the old Bombay in the novel. Using it is a slow, ritual process that involves a camaraderie and acceptance of others that fosters some mutual affection for all involved. When the visitor rehabs and leaves the old Bombay, he loses track of the life of the city. Revisiting the new city, Mumbai, in the first decade of the 21st Century, heroin from Pakistan has become the new symbol. Its use involves an isolated process that is quick and desperate interfering with the affectionate bonds that were part of ritual opium use. The visitor sees that the city forgot its past and became a place of immediate but dissociative life. Without time to give and receive affection, the incidence of violence, cruelty, and artless tearing down and rebuilding parts of the renamed city has stolen its mysterious life force in the eyes of the returning visitor.Narcopolis reminds me of The Alexandria Quartet Boxed Set by Lawrence Durrell in which characters try to understand the life force of the great city of Alexandria as it changes over the time of their interacting lives. This is a very interesting novel especially in its description of characters who believe that the pulse of the city is like the perpetual high that they seek with chemicals. Ultimately, these truth seekers are overwhelmed by the power of the city and the limits of their understanding of their futile quest to be free of pain.