The Book of Chocolate Saints follows the unforgettable character Francis Newton Xavier and his journey towards salvation - or damnation - or perhaps both.
It is intoxicating, blazingly intelligent literary fiction - a strange, beautiful hymn to the artistic life lived fearlessly - that consolidates Thayil\'s reputation as one of the most exciting writers of his generation..
The Book of Chocolate Saints explores our deepest urges in a novel that is sexy, dangerous, and entirely uncompromising.
From his formative years with an infamous school of Bombay poets - documented by his biographer, Diswas - to an uncertain future, Xavier\'s story shows how the artist\'s life itself can become the final monument.
Approaching middle-age, Xavier leaves Manhattan following 9/11, and his journey home to India becomes a voyage into his past.
His paintings and poems embodying the decadent jeu d\'esprit of his heroes like Baudelaire forged his reputation, which is celebrated at a show in Delhi.
In the swooning, hypnotic prose for which his Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel was acclaimed, Jeet Thayil paints a hallucinatory portrait of an ambiguous soul: a self-destructive figure living a wild existence of excess in pursuit of his uncompromising aesthetic vision, a charismatic contrarian, and a tortured artist battling with his conflicting instincts.
The Book of Chocolate Saints follows the unforgettable character Francis Newton Xavier and his journey towards salvation - or damnation - or perhaps both
