Indian · b. 1959
Jeet Thayil's "Narcopolis" was shortlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize, plunging readers into the opium dens of 1970s Bombay. The Indian author—poet, musician, former heroin addict—wrote a novel that makes drug culture sensory and strange. Thayil's prose achieves a hallucinatory density that matches his subject.