Maximum City

By - Mehta, Suketu

Floor - Floor 4

Published - Review, London, 2004

ISBN 10 - 0747259690

ISBN 13 - 9780747259695

Book Status - 1 Qnty Available with us.

Subject - India Mumbai

Shelf No - 4

Call Number - 954.79205 MEH

Physical Description - 498 pages : map ; 24 cm

Book Information

A brilliantly illuminating portrait of Bombay and its people-a book as vast, diverse, and rich in experience, incident, and sensation as the city itself-from an award-winning Indian-American fiction writer and journalist. 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. He approaches the city from unexpected angles-taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs who wrest control of the city's byzantine political and commercial systems . . . following the life of a bar dancer who chose the only life available to her after a childhood of poverty and abuse . . . opening the doors onto the fantastic, hierarchical inner sanctums of Bollywood . . . 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 sidewalks-the essential saga of a great city endlessly played out. Through it all-as each individual story unfolds-we 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. And he makes clear that Bombay-the world's largest city-is a harbinger of the vast megalopolises that will redefine the very idea of "the city" in the near future. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, "Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world. "From the Hardcover edition.

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