English

The narrator in Jeet Thayil's second full-length collection abandons the sectarian histories of 1990s' Bombay for New York City-and the events of 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 a language. It is a source of divinity and it holds a hard-won tenderness for all things living.