According to The Guardian, 'Narcopolis is a blistering debut that can indeed stand proudly on the shelf next to Burroughs and De Quincey. Highly regarded as one of the leading postmodern poets of India, Thayil expertly weaves poetry and prose in this breakthrough work. Narcopolis is a dazzling novel, as seductive as the drugs that permeate every page and told in a way that destabilises the reading experience. But this put bad feelings into me.' Thayil decided to call the book Narcopolis 'because Bombay seemed to me a city of intoxication, where the substances on offer were drugs and alcohol, of course, but also god, glamour, power, money and sex'. Narcopolis's ambience of seedy dereliction is enough to give anyone post-Brexit shivers. it took him five years to write the novel, and he called it 'the opposite of catharsis. Narcopolis stars Elliot Cowan Elodie Yung Jonathan Pryce Robert Bathurst James Callis He has done an impressive job, all the same, of creating a grimy dystopia on a shoestring. The novel draws on his own experiences as a drug addict, and what he calls 'the lost 20 years of my life'. Finished the toughest from my reading list for this year Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil The book is a hard read, portraying 1970s.

The story expands to encompass such characters as Dimple, a hijra, Rashid, the opium house's owner, and Mr Lee, a former Chinese officer, all of whom have stories to tell.

The novel's narrator arrives in Bombay, where he becomes seduced into the opium underground. It is set in 1970s Old Bombay and concerns opium and its influence. Narcopolis is the debut novel of Indian author Jeet Thayil, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize.

Narcopolis review