Book review
Suketu Mehta left Bombay at the age of 14. Twenty-one years later, having lived in Paris, London and New York's East Village, he returned to rediscover the only city he calls his own. 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.

Mehta approaches the life and lives of Bombay from unexpected angles. He takes us into the underworld where Muslim and Hindu gangs manage to wrest some control of the Byzantine political and commercial systems of the city. He follows the life of a bar dancer, whose childhood of poverty and abuse left her no choice but the one she made. He journeys on the famed local trains and out onto the streets and footpaths, where the essential story of Bombay is played out every day by the countless migrants who come in search of a better life. He opens windows into the inner sanctums of Bollywood and the alternative universe at its fringes. And 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.

Candid, impassioned, insightful, both surprisingly funny and heart-rending, Maximum City is a revelation of a complex and ever-changing world: the continent of Bombay.


Press Review(s) for Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

'A gripping, compellingly readable account of a love affair with a city: I couldn't put it down.' — Amitav Ghosh

'Maximum City is the remarkable debut of a major new Indian writer. Humane and moving, sympathetic but outspoken, it's a shocking and sometimes heartbreaking book, teeming with extraordinary stories.' — William Dalrymple



About the author Suketu Mehta is a fiction writer and journalist based in New York. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Harper's, Time, Condé Nast Traveler, The Indian Express, Man's World, Himal and India Magazine.