He writes fearlessly about the horror and wonder that is Bombay. This fidelity to his interlocutors, and to their detail and circumstance, as much as the intelligence and brightness of Mehta's own prose, makesMaximum Cityan extraordinary debuta debut that will rival Arundhati Roy's in fiction.' The Nation 'InMaximum City, Suketu Mehta has given us a brilliant book. Mehta is none of those things and yet, like the best writers, he is all of them.' Shashi Tharoor,Los Angeles Times Book Review 'Mehta is an urban ethnographer with an acute sensitivity to the peculiarities of his city. explores the underside of the city with the inquisitiveness of a voyeur, the sensibility of a poet and the zeal of a private investigator. the accountfierce, engaged, coruscatingof a curious outsider who became, for two years, an intimate insider. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world. And he makes clear that Bombaythe world's largest cityis a harbinger of the vast megalopolises that will redefine the very idea of 'the city' in the near future. Through it allas each individual story unfoldswe hear Mehta's own story: of the mixture of love, frustration, fascination, and intense identification he feels for and with Bombay, as he tries to find home again after twenty-one years abroad. delving into the stories of the countless people who come from the villages in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalksthe essential saga of a great city endlessly played out. opening the doors onto the fantastic, hierarchical inner sanctums of Bollywood. following the life of a bar dancer who chose the only life available to her after a childhood of poverty and abuse. He approaches the city from unexpected anglestaking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs who wrest control of the city's byzantine political and commercial systems.

A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us a true insider's view of this stunning city, bringing to his account a rare level of insight, detail, and intimacy. A brilliantly illuminating portrait of Bombay and its peoplea book as vast, diverse, and rich in experience, incident, and sensation as the city itselffrom an award-winning Indian-American fiction writer and journalist.

Book by suketu mehta