Jeet Thayil Novelist: Profile and Biography

Jeet Thayil is much popular known as an Indian poet, novelist and musician. Jeet was born to writer and biographer Thayil Jacob Sony George (TJS George) and Ammu George. As his fahre had been posted in various parts of the country and abroad, Jeet had to move from one school to another and finally completed his education from Bombay, Hong Kong and New York. He completed his Masters in Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College New York. Sheba Thayil, his sister is also known as a journalist and writer who had worked with various popular newspapers and magazines.

Best known as a performance artist, songwriter and guitarist, Jeet is the proud author of four books: These Errors Are Correct, English, Apocalypso and Gemini. Jeet got world attention as his first novel Narcopolis published by Faber & Faber was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012.

The novel travels through his own life experienced in Bombay during 1970's and 80's. The book narrates how opium had changed his thoughts and later about those people who too had the same experience. Set at the backdrops of Bombay, Jeet calls it as "the lost 20 years of my life".

The title of the novel was decided as 'Narcopolis' purposely as from the view point of Jeet Bombay was a city of intoxication, with drugs, alcohol, glamour, power and money. Being short listed for the 2012 Booker Man Prize, Narcopolis had been compared to that of William S. Burroughs's Junkie and Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. With high regard towards the novel, the jury commented that they "admired his perfumed prose from the drug dens and backstreets of India's most concentrated conurbation".

From the words of Jeet, the novel is to honour the marginalised, the addicted and deranged people in the opium dens and attached brothel. 'Narcopolis' do have various characters including Dimple (the eunuch), Rashid (the opium house's owner), Rumi(the salaryman), Newton Xavier(the celebrated painter) and Mr Lee(a former Chinese officer) who all have their own tales to be written down. His novel travels through a path which is not much familiar to the Indian novel concepts.

Jeet is also the author of the libretto for the opera Babur which had its world premiere at Switzerland in 2012, later in United Kingdom and India. Worked as a journalist in New York, Mumbai and Bangalore, Jeet is currently living in New Delhi.

Awards and Honours

• 2012 - These Errors are Correct was awarded the Sahitya Akademy Award for English


• 2012 - Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2012 for his novel Narcopolis


• 2013 - won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature worth $50,000 for the novel Narcopolis