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S'està carregant… Narcopolisde Jeet Thayil
  
  ) devendradave | Sep 1, 2020 |  In the same vein, Narcopolis is a novel about an opium den that isn't about an opium den. It's about Bombay, about the changing face of India over the past four decades. In that respect it helps if you know a little Indian. Luckily for me I live with one, and she was happy to translate the snatches of Hindi used here and there, and to explain some of the more esoteric historical points. I suspect she was also a little confused. “What does this mean?” “It's a man who was totally castrated as a child, and I mean totally: meat, two veg, and the sack they rode in on.” “Oh okay, thanks. … What does this mean?” “It's a bit of a song from an old Hindi film.” “Oh okay, thanks. … What does this mean?” “It's a fried-potato curry.” “Oh okay, thanks. … What does this mean?” “Heroin. And also: what in the hell are you reading?” There's a lot to like about Narcopolis, and I liked a lot of it. I suspect I'm not possessed of a sufficiently poetic soul to ever love it, but I'd recommend it to those of you who do. (  )1  imlee | Jul 7, 2020 | In the same vein, Narcopolis is a novel about an opium den that isn't about an opium den. It's about Bombay, about the changing face of India over the past four decades. In that respect it helps if you know a little Indian. Luckily for me I live with one, and she was happy to translate the snatches of Hindi used here and there, and to explain some of the more esoteric historical points. I suspect she was also a little confused. “What does this mean?” “It's a man who was totally castrated as a child, and I mean totally: meat, two veg, and the sack they rode in on.” “Oh okay, thanks. … What does this mean?” “It's a bit of a song from an old Hindi film.” “Oh okay, thanks. … What does this mean?” “It's a fried-potato curry.” “Oh okay, thanks. … What does this mean?” “Heroin. And also: what in the hell are you reading?” There's a lot to like about Narcopolis, and I liked a lot of it. I suspect I'm not possessed of a sufficiently poetic soul to ever love it, but I'd recommend it to those of you who do. ( ) leezeebee | Jul 6, 2020 | (  ) terribly | Mar 23, 2016 |  ) dcozy | Mar 14, 2015 |
 If you were to write a story set in Bombay, as the poet Jeet Thayil prefers to call the city now known as Mumbai in his outstanding debut novel, you don't have to work too hard. Much of it can write itself if you connect the dots of history: a city made of islands reclaimed by the British, a polyglot culture where all of India's languages, faiths and castes mingle, where the prevailing currency is money and its dreams are told, nay, sung, in those schmaltzy, kitschy Bollywood movies, and which lives on an edge, periodically blown up when terrorists set explosives, but returning to life the next day, resilient and resigned. The ingenuity of Thayil's novel lies in how he has squeezed this entire universe into an opium pipe. And when the narrative dissipates into smoke, it leaves a deceptively addictive odour, with memorable characters at the margins of society. There is Dimple, the eunuch keen to read and learn; the Bengali who pretends to know more than he does (or maybe he does); and Rashid himself, who runs the opium den with disdain that's at once sardonic and laconic. There are others too, given peculiar names drawn from Bombay slang, but most try to do no harm, and often show heartwarming humanity. The unobtrusive narrator is Dom, whose soul-killing job is as a proof-reader of publicity material in a pharmaceutical company (with easy access to chemical substances). Just alongside the den are other vices - prostitution and crime.  Jeet Thayil’s debut novel, the deftly and aptly titled Narcopolis is—like the polis in which it takes place—part cacophony, part symphony: a whirlwind of drugs, sex, violence, loves, lives, deaths, and more than anything, stories. “Bombay,” the book begins, “which obliterated its own history by changing its name and surgically altering its face, is the hero or heroin of this story.” As the title suggests, the book is about drugs and about place. But it’s about much more than that as well. Narcotic drugs have inspired much storytelling and literary dreaming, if rather less actual writing. Of those few novels that slide out of the smoke on to paper, we assume addiction is a requisite for authenticity and yet an enormous hindrance to productivity. After all, it is hardly playing by the rules of decadence and dereliction to find the willpower and tenacity to finish a manuscript. But a tiny number do convince the public that theirs is a genuine account of an addiction whose clutches the writer escaped for long enough to scribble down a compelling narrative: think William Burroughs's Junky, or Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Does Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis, a tale of opium dens and heroin addiction in Mumbai, join that select club? It is not an easy task. And there's another challenge: many books by foreign-educated Indians read as though they were written in a New York penthouse suite, the author having spent a couple of weeks researching a multi-generational, sprawling saga of Mumbai lowlife by chatting to the house servants of their relatives on the phone. Narcopolis is a blistering debut that can indeed stand proudly on the shelf next to Burroughs and De Quincey. Thayil is quoted as saying that he lost almost 20 years of his life to addiction, but on this showing the experience did not go to waste. We can celebrate that he emerged intact and gave us this book. PremisDistincions
A tale of vice and passion set against a backdrop of late 1970s Bombay finds a New Yorker becoming entranced with the underworld culture of an opium den and brothel where he encounters a pipe-making eunuch, a violent businessman, and a Chinese refugee. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
Debats actualsCapCobertes populars
 Google Books — S'està carregant…GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana: (3.5)
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Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil
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