I’m also curious as to who this book is intended for. The language is far too mature for children or young adults to read but the child-like writing, which is consistent with protagonist, doesn’t seem to be catering to the adult reader either. I found that quite confusing. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is a moving and confident novelabout the preciousness of life.The storytelling isdistinctive and immersive.” —Nikesh Shukla, editor of The Good Immigrant The prose perfectly captures all the characters' youthful voices, complete with some Hindi and Urdu terms, whose meanings, if not immediately obvious, become clear with repetition. Anappara's complex and moving tale showcases a strong talent. Anappara’s Jai is endearing, entertaining, and earnest; he keeps you on the edge of your seat. He is curious, courageous, cheeky, and unabashedly, unapologetically speaking his mind, and the truth: “The next India-Pakistan war the news says will happen any time now has started in our classroom.” Jai and Djinn Patrol are reminiscent of NoViolet Bulawayo’s 10-year-old protagonist, Darling (from We Need New Names), and her home, “Paradise,” the bitterly, ironically named shantytown, loosely based on Bulawayo’s Zimbabwean hometown. Both Anappara and Bulawayo stretch language successfully, and to similar artistic purposes. As for this author, she sits comfortably, and at ease, inside a child’s imagination — seeing as she does the world through his eyes. Djinn Patrol is a world of extremes and exaggerations. It is a world where inanimate objects come alive and a world of innocence, wit, and wonder. (“‘There’s nothing in this world I’m afraid of,’ I say, which is another lie. I’m scared of JCBs, exams, djinns that are probably real and Ma’s slaps.”) It’s also a world where spaces stretch and shrink, superimpose and segment (“The good and bad thing about living in a basti is that news flies into your ears whether you want it to or not”) and one which is described through a limited and limitless lexicon. Words twist and twirl, phrases trip over phrases, sentences play catch-up and turn cinematic. Zooming in and then out, Jai’s basti life bubbles, bustles, and bursts through Anappara’s figures of speech and punctuations — particularly personification and hyphens.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara - Waterstones

Deepa Anappara grew up in Kerala, southern India, and worked as a journalist in cities including Mumbai and Delhi. Her reports on the impact of poverty and religious violence on the education of children won the Developing Asia Journalism Awards, the Every Human has Rights Media Awards, and the Sanskriti-Prabha Dutt Fellowship in Journalism. A partial of her debut novel, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, won the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, the Bridport/Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award and the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and is currently studying for a PhD on a CHASE doctoral fellowship. Nine-year-old Jai watches too many reality cop shows, thinks he's smarter than his friend Pari (even though she always gets top marks) and considers himself to be a better boss than Faiz (even though Faiz is the one with a job). Soon other children go missing. Omvir, a friend of Bahadur, vanishes. Next, a 16-year-old girl, Aanchal, disappears. The police insist that Omvir has simply run away and refuse any search effort. Aanchal was a good girl employed as a beautician while studying English in hopes of becoming a call centre worker. The police, with no valid evidence, said she was a brothel worker in her 20s and had run away with a much older Moslem lover. When next, a 4-year-old girl disappears, not only are the parents of the missing distraught, but the entire neighbourhood is frantic and afraid for the safety of the children. The vivid, unruly novel Anappara wrote defies easy classification. Given the sometimes capricious exploits of its young investigators, "Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line" could conceivably be shelved in the YA mystery section. Yet Anappara also plays in a self-aware manner with the narrative; for instance, interspersing victims’ … accounts of their disappearances within the main story. By novel's end, the tale darkens into urban noir. Even so, Jai's pliant voice retains a stubborn cheerfulness, a will to believe in the possibility of deliverance in this fallen world.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR a b Corrigan, Maureen (6 February 2020). "In 'Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line,' an unforgettable voice emerges from an Indian slum". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020 . Retrieved 1 October 2020.

Like 24% of the Indian population, the people in Djinn Patrol live in slums, and many of them work for the ‘hi-fi’ people in the nearby areas. They are people who live in poverty, who give hafta to the policemen so they don’t demolish their bastis, and still try to give their children the best future they can afford. When the children start disappearing one by one, their parents implore the police to investigate. The police refuse, citing various reasons such as the girl must have run off on her own (or with her older Muslim boyfriend). As the situation turns dire, the slum-dwellers take matters into their own hands, start vigils and try to find the missing children on their own. As the novel comes to its end, and the slum-dwellers catch the culprit, while the police are busy catching the commissioner’s cat, Jai thinks of how many lives could have been saved, if only the police in real life had been as efficient and honest as the ones on his beloved show, Police Patrol. Set in a basti, or Indian slum, where children have vanished and the police are disinclined to help, the novel follows 9-year-old Jai and his friends as they play detective to try and solve the case. It’s an incredible window on daily life in such a place – the precarity of knowing the authorities could bulldoze your home at any moment, but also the strong family and community bonds that form there. The sights sounds and smells of the basti are vividly evoked as Jai & investigate, and this immersive depiction is really well-balanced to be neither sensationalised nor sugar-coated. In Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, journalist and author, Deepa Anappara, has the reader firmly on the ground in an Indian basti, with its sights, sounds, and smells of the yummy food wafting through the neighborhood, and all of it is through the eyes of the lovable child narrator, Jai. 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 Will Jai and his two friends manage to find any of the missing youngsters or any evidence of what happened to them? Who is committing these atrocious crimes? What is the motivation? Will his sister be found in time? What will be the aftermath for their families and neighbours?

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line: Mystery and Thriller Books

But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighbourhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and rumours of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.

Flood, Alison (3 March 2020). "Women's prize for fiction lines up 'heavy hitters' on 2020 longlist". The Guardian . Retrieved 1 October 2020.

Djinn Patrol’ Blurring The Line Between Fiction And Reality In ‘Djinn Patrol’

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 Just because you read books doesn't mean you know everything," Faiz tells her. "I work. Life's the best teacher. Everyone says so." WINNER OF THE EDGAR® AWARD • ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE 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 ImageIndia is a very different experience when you are a girl, than when you are a boy—because of that, and the setting of the slum, Pari and Runu would have been better protagonists. In the second of the three living-saving stories, we’re told: “This story is a talisman. Hold it close to your hearts.” Toward the close of the novel, Jai, defeated and distraught, says, “I’ll never watch Police Patrol again […] A murder isn’t a story for me anymore; it’s not a mystery either.” Stories may not save lives, but they can tell of a truth. And for this, we can hold Deepa Anappara’s story close to our hearts. 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 Jai’s] remarkable voice retains a stubborn lightness, a will to believe in the possibility of deliverance in this fallen world.” — The Washington Post

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara - Waterstones Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara - Waterstones

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 But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again. A moving and confident novel about the preciousness of life. The storytelling is distinctive and immersive Nikesh Shukla, author and editor of The Good ImmigrantDeepa’s novel, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, will be published by Chatto & Windus on January 30, 2020. Overlooking the slum is a gated community, populated by those at the other end of the economic spectrum, where Jai’s mother works for a demanding and domineering boss. The juxtaposition is nicely conceived and Anappara creates a sense of claustrophobia. While Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is a fascinating study of India in the modern age, the plot left much to be desired. The protagonist was difficult to gel with and the pacing was far too slow to be enjoyable. None of which was helped by the rushed ending, which felt like an afterthought and unearned. It doesn’t help that the protagonist, Jai, is the least interesting character in the book. I realise he’s nine, but he comes across as selfish, narcissistic, and extremely unhelpful. His point of view is interesting, but I can’t help thinking that the book would have been elevated had it been told from Pari’s or Runu’s—Jai’s sister—point of view.