Books give esthetic and tactile pleasure, from the dust jacket art to the binding, paper, typography and text design, from the moment of purchase until the last page is turned.
The ‘Narcopolis’ of the title is (Old) Bombay of the late 1970s and the novel’s setting is an opium den and a brothel in the underbelly of that city. It opens with a sentence three-pages in length, which would perhaps best be described as ‘breathless’ were it not for the fact one has to pause to take in the sheer glory of the sentence itself and what is being depicted.
— I can’t wait to read this first novel by Jeet Thayli.
