Name: Maximum City
ISBN: 9789386815842

Suketu Mehta

A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider's view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs, following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse, opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood, and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks. As each individual story unfolds, Mehta also recounts his own efforts to make a home in Bombay after more than twenty years abroad. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and everchanging world.

Bombay Lost & Found

Maximum City

Winner Of The 2005 Kiriyama Prize For Non-Fiction Suketu Mehta Left Bombay At The Age Of 14. Twenty-One Years Later He Returned To Rediscover The City. The Result Is This Stunning, Brilliantly Illuminating Portrait Of The Megalopolis And Its People-A Book, Seven Years In The Making, That Is As Vast, As Diverse, As Rich In Experience, Incident And Sensation As The City Itself. Extraordinary . . . The Best Book Yet Written About That Great, Ruined Metropolis -Salman Rushdie Like One Of Bombay S Teeming Chawls, Maximum City Is Part Nightmare And Part Millennial Hallucination, Filled With Detail, Drama And A Richly Varied Cast Of Characters. In His Quest To Plumb Both The Grimy Depths And Radiant Heights Of The Continent That Is Bombay, Suketu Mehta Has Taken Travel Writing To An Entirely New Level. This Is A Gripping, Compellingly Readable Account Of A Love Affair With A City: I Couldn T Put It Down -Amitav Ghosh Bombay Gets Its Boswell, His Chronicle As Sprawling And Enchanting As His Subject'-India Today A Seething, Rumbling, Deeply Compassionate Break-Dance Of A Book -Hindu Narrative Reporting At Its Finest, Probably The Best Work Of Nonfiction To Come Out Of India In Recent Years . . . Mehta Succeeds So Brilliantly In Taking The Pulse Of This Riotous Urban Jungle -New York Times Book Review Mehta S Tales, Pounding Along In The Present Tense, Read Like A Modern Arabian Nights, Only Crueller, More Poignant, More Real. . .Part Memoir, Part Journalism, Part Travelogue, Maximum City Is A Tour De Force -The Times The Mother Of All Mumbai Books . . . Stunningly Written -Time Out Mumbai

Bombay lost and found

Maximum city

Vishwa

Quite possibly one of my favourite books. I read this after I was supposed to move to Mumbai, but ended up living in Ahmedabad instead due to the pandemic starting up. Harboured a lot of curiosity about that city, India's recent history, and how that is all playing out now.

This book gave me an incredible respect for the author, who seems to have had the experience of talking to everyone from big Bollywood personalities to anonymous assassins. That seems like am incredible thing to have the opportunity to do.

Also, he graphically describes the city in it's glory and whatever the opposite of that is. Someone asked me if this book paints Bombay in a bad light; I'd say that it does the opposite. Despite describing the copious amounts of religious violence, corruption, and other atrocities, it shows you how the people in the city operate to do great things, how the strong the power of community can be, and what makes the city beat. There's plenty of historical and political context, growth, watching people change.

It's increased my fascination for the place even more. Hopefully life takes me back again and I do get to spend time there soon.

tim h

Narrative nonfiction at its best.

I really loved reading this-- the Mumbai underworld sections in particular. I am fascinated by the concept of the mega-city. This, coupled with Wikipedia and Google Maps street views, was able to really put me on the ground in Mumbai.

Huge recommend if you might be interested in gangland reports from the street itself (from the eyes of gangsters and police). While this book was released about 20 years ago, many of the subjects are still active and at large. This is a good intro to other books on the subject. This subject encompasses a little over a third of the book.

Big recommend if you want a nice grasp on local politics, insight in to Hindu/Muslim relations, wonderful descriptions of what its like on the ground in a chaotic mega-city.

This was an absolute joy to read. I would give this 5 stars, but while Suketa Mehta never goes full misogyny, he does channel his inner Bukowski and goes off on some dumb tangents about the differences between men and women. It reads like something you'd wait patiently for your dad to stop saying before changing the subject ASAP. It's not that bad but it's notable.

A portrait of Bombay, India, and its people chronicles the everday life of the city and its inhabitants, from the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs to the diverse people who come from the villages in search of a better life.

Bombay Lost And Found

c0up

Klaus Eck

Avinash Yadav

haifa

Sapan Parikh

The Hissing Saint

garima mamgain

Riah Forbes 

Sreeja Pavuluri

Joshua Line

Bombay's story, told through the lives, often desperately near the edge, of some of the people who live there. The complex texture of these extraordinary tales is threaded together by Suketu Mehta's own history of growing up in Bombay and returning to live there after a 21-year absence. Hitmen, dancing girls, cops, movie stars, poets, beggars and politicians - Suketu looked at the city through their eyes, and in looking found the city within himself.

Maximum City Bombay Lost & Found

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