by Jeet Thayil
First published 2020
Dominic Ullis stands in a bathroom, carefully placing a business card on the sink. He rolls up a banknote and inhales the final remains of his dead wife's ashes. After this devastating loss, Ullis runs to Bombay hunting for escape and a lethal new drug called Meow Meow. What follows becomes a fevered weekend odyssey through the sprawling city. He moves from glittering towers of wealth to urine-soaked alleyways, meeting strangers who carry their own secrets and stories. But Ullis can never be certain whether to believe anyone he encounters, his judgment warped by substances and sorrow. This becomes a wild ride through the brutal landscape of mourning, racing toward total destruction and maybe, if he's lucky, some kind of revelation.
Genres: fiction, addiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Bombay
Period: Contemporary
220 pages · Hardcover · Faber & Faber
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, substance-abuse