Bibliofile

Narco Analysis

An Indian book in the $50,000 Booker Prize is always cause for celebration—the surprise entry to make it to the 12-book longlist is Jeet Thayil’s Bombay book, Narcopolis. It’s about poets, pimps and pushers of the city in the ’70s—a world Thayil knows intimately, having fought substance-abuse successfully. Big names like Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith (who has written a novel after seven years) and Martin Amis failed to make the cut. Thayil is up against some formidable novelists, like Booker winner Hilary Mantel for Bring Up The Bodies and Will Self for Umbrella. What with the Booker announcement, the bookies aren’t far behind. Right now, Thayil’s book is the least favourite with odds of 20 to 1, and Mantel is on top at 4 to 1. But these keep changing as the shortlist nears; the final winner is rarely the one bookies back. Aravind Adiga, for instance, made many punters suffer heavy losses.

Trouble, His Business

Raymond Chandler, who elevated crime-writing to high literature (Auden once said his books “should not be read as escape literature, but as works of art”), took to writing late, when he was 44, and had no formal training. He once “deconstructed” an Erle Stanley Gardner book and wrote it all over again, just to see how it’s done. All this is out in a new, big biography of Chandler by Tom Williams. Chandler is one of the early practioners of the hard-boiled detective—a world-weary soul with little moral certitude (his private-eye, Philip Marlowe, is immortalised by Bogart) in a troubled world. The book traces Chandler’s overnight success, his Hollywood days, with mega hits like Double Indemnity (screenplay), The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely and his eventual drink-sozzled downfall. A real treat for all Chandler fans.