Point of View

Jeet Thayil tells his novel Narcopolis in the first-person and different, unidentified third-person point of view in a chaotic kind of stream-of-consciousness. The first-person narrator, Dom, narrates different parts of the novel, including early on and at the end (for it is through his eyes the novel begins and ends as an opium dream); and narrators shift and the plot suddenly changes continuously through the course of the novel. As the novel unfolds, there are many references to “he” and “she” without clear notice of who they actually are – until either later on in the chapter or until there are enough clues to make a determination. This is done intentionally to create a sense of confusion, uncertainty, and illogic, all reflecting the drug high of the characters portrayed in the novel. This can cause the reader to become easily confused or misled, but this is...