The narrator in these poems abandons the sectarian histories of 1990s’ Bombay for the relative calm of New York, only to find himself a witness to September 11, 2001. In the faux prologue poem ‘About the Author’, he stands ‘on Sixth, watching ruin, with a handful of rain and a prophecy’, a citizen of no country except the republic that gives the book its title. English here is more than language—it is a metaphor for divinity, and it holds a hard-won tenderness for all things living. Jeet Thayil’s second full-length collection links images of water, addiction and forgiveness; poems that evoke multiple outsider perspectives are set in landscapes as various as Hong Kong, Doune (Scotland), Pashupatinath (Nepal), Bombay, and, always, New York City.
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