Jeet Thayil’s new ‘documentary novel’: The restless lives of those shaped by separation across times

Wild metal music in the streets of Hong Kong, electric screech of napalm, monks on fire, screaming horses. Nightly brawls in Central and Wanchai. People from all over the world roam the island, squaddies, sailors, bankers, spies, drug dealers, con artists, all kinds of adventurers looking for booze and trouble. 1967, Year of the Fire Sheep, the Age of Aquarius and Vietnam.

Fifty years later, he tells his son of his Hanoi adventure. It is unusual to hear stories from George’s past. Father and son aren’t close.

In his late teens and early twenties in Madras and Bombay, George aligns himself with the student communist movement. Years later, while working in Hong Kong, Raghavan, a friend from his days in Bombay, offers to arrange a visit to North Vietnam. (Journalists from Western publications aren’t allowed into the north.) Raghavan is a known communist and a correspondent for Blitz, the tabloid of the Indian independence movement. Unexpectedly, he’d accepted an invitation to George’s wedding and they’ve been in touch ever since.

“This was in 1972 or 1973,” George says. “Every journalist worth his salt wanted to get into Hanoi. They’d never have let me in, but Raghavan vouched for me. I have no idea why....

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