Author: Jeet Thayil
Profile: Jeet Thayil is an Indian novelist, poet, musician and librettist. Being a well known poet, his four well known collections as an author are: Gemini, These Errors Are Correct, Apocalypso and English. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize and has won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his collection of poems, These Errors are Correct.
While talking about his novel, Narcopolis, Jeet states that he has always been doubtful of a novel that presents India in soft focus, as a place of mangoes, monsoons, spices, loving elders and loved children. One would have to go much further than the merely wistful will allow for matching Mumbai as a subject.
Narcopolis his first novel is set in the Bombay of 70s and 80s. It was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Writing style: Jeet Thayil writes with mainly personal concerns, takes care while working on his feelings through colorations of mood instead of using straight-forward statements. He does not trouble his mind with the Indianness of other poets in India. The idioms used by Jeet Thayil are an outcome of cosmopolitan blend of styles and is at the same time, his own, quite clearly.
Published Texts:
Poetry
2015 – Collected Poems
2008 – These Errors Are Correct
2004 – English
1997 – Apocalypso
1992 – Gemini
Fiction
2012 – Narcopolis
2017 – The Book of Chocolate Saints
2020 – Low
As an Editor
The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets
2008 – 60 Indian Poets
2006 – Divided Time: India and the End of Diaspora
2005 – Give the Sea Change and It Shall Change: 56 Indian Poets
1997 – Vox2: Seven Stories
Awards and Acknowledgements:
2012 – Sahitya Akademi Award for English
2012 – Man Booker Prize
2013 – The Hindu Literary Prize
2013 – DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
