Changes

|title=Narcopolis

|author=Jeet Thayil

|publisher=Faber and Faber

|date=February 2012

|summary=Thayil's Booker longlisted novel uses the emergence of heroin over opium as a metaphor for the changes in Bombay/Mumbai. Like a troubled dream, Thayil's poetic style can ramble and narcotic novels are always tricky to pull off but this one works better than many. Think: an Indian ''Trainspotting''.

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Novels about narcotic substances are notoriously hard to pull off. The challenge is to make the induced events interesting and meaningful to the, presumably, non-induced reader. In ''Narcopolis'', Jeet Thayil pulls this off surprisingly well for me, although it's fair to say that it won't be everyone's taste. It's not a book that the Bombay/Mumbai tourist office will be keen to promote. A cover quotation links the book to a similar vein (OK, that's a poor choice of words in the circumstances) to ''Trainspotting'' and that's not far from the mark.