- Published: 30 January 2020
- ISBN: 9781473576001
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: Audio Download
- Length: 9 hr 41 min
- Narrators: Indira Varma, Himesh Patel, Antonio Aakeel, Deepa Anappara
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE 2020
- Published: 30 January 2020
- ISBN: 9781473576001
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: Audio Download
- Length: 9 hr 41 min
- Narrators: Indira Varma, Himesh Patel, Antonio Aakeel, Deepa Anappara
Djinn Patrol is storytelling at its best. The prose is not just sympathetic, vivid, and beautifully detailed, but also completely assured and deft. We care about these characters from the first page and our concern for them is richly repaid
Anne Enright, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Gathering
A brilliant debut
Ian McEwan, Sunday Times bestselling author of Atonement
Deepa Anappara is a writer of considerable talent. This is a wonderful, energetic book filled with humour and pathos. Charming, sensitive and deeply moving
Nathan Filer, Costa Prize-winning author of The Shock of the Fall
A stunningly original tale. I stayed up late every night until I finished, reluctant to part from Deepa Anappara’s heart-stealing characters
Etaf Rum, New York Times bestselling author of A Woman Is No Man
Extraordinarily good, deeply moving and thought provoking with brilliant characterisation. A very important book
Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange
A magnificent achievement: the endeavours of the Djinn Patrol offer us a captivating world of wit, warmth and heartbreak, beautifully crafted through a child's unique perspective
Mahesh Rao, author of The Smoke is Rising
The children at the heart of this story will stay with you long after you turn the last page… a wonderful debut
Christie Watson, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Language of Kindness
A moving and confident novel about the preciousness of life. The storytelling is distinctive and immersive
Nikesh Shukla, author and editor of The Good Immigrant
A profoundly emphatic work of creative genius that will stay with you forever
Sonia Faleiro, author of Beautiful Thing
Created from whole cloth, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is a richly textured rendition of a world little seen in Indian literature. There is no desire to smooth and tidy in fiction what is untidy in life, but instead there is a pay off for the reader in a story that is as quietly troubling as it is convincing
Mridula Koshy, author of Not Only the Things That Have Happened
A story full of humor, warmth, and heartbreak … Jai's voice is irresistible: funny, vivid, smart, and yet always believably a child's point of view … Engaging characters, bright wit, and compelling storytelling make a tale that's bleak at its core and profoundly moving
Kirkus, starred review
Informed by her times as a journalist in Mumbai and Delhi, Deepa Anappara’s debut is a fine portrait of modern-day India… an utterly convincing voice–lively, cheeky and irrepressible… Anappara skilfully reveals the harsh reality that lies just beyond Jai’s understanding of his world
Alice O'Keeffe, Bookseller
In this thrilling reading experience, Deepa Anappara creates a drama of childhood that is as wild as it is intimate. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is an entertaining, wonderful debut
Chigozie Obioma, Booker-prize shortlisted author of An Orchestra of Minorities
A dazzling journey into the heart of India and its most vulnerable citizens -- its impoverished and disenfranchised children. A novel at once brimming with the wonder of childhood innocence, and constrained by the heartache of living amidst injustice and prejudice. Deepa Anappara shows us a modern, dangerously divided India that has long needed to be seen
Nazanine Hozar, author of Aria
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is unlike any book I have ever read—surprising, vividly imagined, and full of humor and humanity—and I fell head over heels for Jai, the police-show-obsessed narrator on a quest to find his missing classmate. Deepa Anappara is a writer of rare insight and a sure-footed storyteller. This book will charm you on one page, and rip your heart out on the next
Amy Jones, author of Every Little Piece of Me
Deepa Anappara takes us inside urban India with astonishing specificity, into a funny and heartbreaking child’s world of wonder and cruelty. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is addictive and unforgettable. Once you’re in Jai’s neighbourhood you don't want to leave
Todd Babiak, author of The Empress of Idaho
[Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line] makes an urgent case for the protection of the country’s youngest and most vulnerable
Timothy Harrison, Vogue, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is likely to be one of the country's standout works of fiction in 2020
Asian Image, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*
Irresistibly brimming with character and personality, I couldn’t stop picking it up for the bright lights of the writing. I also love the fact that it addresses an important issue while opening a window on everyday life in India. Wonderful.
Diana Evans
Anappara brings [the bazaar] brilliantly to vibrant, chaotic life... The amateur detectives and their schemes are utterly winning, effervescing off the page, but the tone gradually darkens as more children disappear, reflecting terrible actual statistics... [A] stand-out debut
Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail
Vivid writing and a gripping plot with an unforgettable narrator
BN1 Magazine
A vivid, compelling debut that mixes Jai’s joie de vivre with a menacing truth about the shockingly precarious lives of poor children who go missing every day in India
Charlotte Heathcote, Sunday Express
Deepa Anappara’s richly textured and delightfully observed debut evokes the sights and sounds of a sprawling Indian city. Every detail rings true... Day-to-day life in the slums has such vitality that you immediately warm to the residents, with their resilience and dry humour
Max Davidson, Mail on Sunday
A charming yet heartbreaking novel
Stylist
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is less a reading experience than an encounter with a life force. The rattle-tattle energy of the basti will pull the readers in as they experience the smells, colours and tastes of this captivating world. From relaying the rampant poverty to inherent cultural barriers, to corruption including openly bribing police, the book is utterly mesmerising
Umbreen Ali, Asian Image
Anappara delivers nuanced commentary on Indian society amid dark, derring-do adventure
i
It’s not hard to see why Djinn Patrol is one of the most eagerly awaited debut novels this spring. It feels like a reckoning with modern India and its many complex problems… Anappara cleverly filters a uniquely Indian horror story through a chirpy, Famous Five-esque narrative and the voice of a witty, young, have-a-go hero
Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times
A first novel of true distinction… There is true Dickensian vigour in the way Anappara evokes the noise and smells, the timeless boredom and the fear of life in the Basti, the slum dwelling… I cannot recommend this too highly
A.N. Wilson, Tablet
Anappara impressively inhabits the inner worlds of children lost to their families
Maria Russo, *Editor's Choice* New York Times
Life in the slums of an Indian city is vividly described in this novel... Though the subject matter is heartbreaking, this debut author handles it with lightness
Good Housekeeping
It’s difficult to convey what’s so special about Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line without spoilers, but suffice to say it’s transformed utterly by its concluding chapters... [Anappara] delivers something more powerful and complex than the vast majority of more highly crafted novels. The narrative goes beyond portraying how the poor of India have been betrayed by their government, and suggests they might also be betrayed by the stories we like to tell about them. Jai has to grow up overnight: this book asks that the reader does, too.
Sandra Newman, *A dazzling debut* Guardian
Anappara’s debut novel immediately charms through Jai’s voice, and Anappara has caught the scale of a child’s world perfectly… Djinn Patrol is the kind of novel you both can’t stop reading and don’t want to end, because it means letting go of characters who feel like friends
Sarah Ditum, In the Moment
Anappara's characters brim with swagger and spirit and she creates a world of wit, warmth and heart
Nina Stibbe
Extraordinary... moving and unpredictable... remarkable
Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post
In Jai, Anappara has created a boy vivid in his humanity, one whose voice somersaults on the page. Rich with easy joy, Anappara’s writing announces the arrival of a literary supernova... (Warning: If you begin reading the book in the morning, don’t expect to get anything done for the rest of the day.)
Lorraine Adams, New York Times Book Review
This moving and stylish book pulls off a difficult trick. It is an engaging, amusing tale, powered by Jai’s ebullient personality; at the same time it is an insightful portrait of the underside of 21st-century India… As Dickens did, Ms Anappara understands the power of fiction to bring alive the plights of people readers might otherwise overlook
Economist
What really sets Djinn Patrol apart…is the authenticity of Jai’s voice. Narrating in the first person, Anappara immerses us not only in Jai’s world of deep social inequities, but also in his internal world… Anappara creates an endearing and highly engaging narrator to navigate us through the dark underbelly of modern India
Hannah Beckerman, Observer
Jai is a wonderful narrator, fully imagined and in Anappara's hands, his world takes shape with care yet without sentiment... Anappara took me effortlessly into the alien world of a slum in an Indian metropolis, and helped me to see it through a child's eyes
Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times
A vivid, immersive debut laced with wonder
Maria Crawford, Financial Times
A captivating literary style... A dazzling, wonderful book
Elif Shafak, Daily Mail