Low

Surprisingly colourful and enjoyable . . . Low offers vicarious kicks without the comedown

A novel of our times . . . Low is beautifully written, intelligent and gripping, and elicits compassion for a character who is pitifully adrift

Intoxication is difficult to write about with clarity and without self-indulgence. Only a few writers succeed in making hallucinatory reveries or amphetamine-fuelled adventures engaging for the reader. But there are glorious exceptions in modern fiction, such as the American Denis Johnson and the Chilean Roberto Bolaño — and after three novels in which drugs feature heavily, the Indian writer Jeet Thayil is another . . . Thayil writes about his city with the kind of deep affinity and close attention that Orhan Pamuk displays in his novels set in Istanbul.

Tender and moving . . . is a vigorous and enjoyable book that carries the reader along with pace and exuberance. The themes of Low might hail from the depths, but reading it elicits a peculiar high.

Where Low achieves its own highs is in Thayil’s descriptions of drug-taking . . . Time dissolves and language is given an extra shimmer; the world warps into a brand new shape. The result is not just another novel about taking drugs. At times it reads more like a novel that has taken them.

[A] lively evocation of India’s most overblown metropolis

Very good on drugs . . . even better on Trump . . . demonstrates Thayil thinking, very cleverly, inside the box, and largely inside Dom’s and his own head

[An] immersive tale of grief and oblivion that recalls Malcolm Lowry’s classic Under the Volcano

[A] lively evocation of India’s most overblown metropolis . . . [and] scorching diatribes against the country’s corrupt rulers

Set against a backdrop of misadventure and a kaleidoscope of colourful characters, Low is as exhilarating as it is unputdownable.

A madcap, trippy ride to the dark abyss of grief.