Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

ISBN-13: 9780375703409 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 560 str.

Suketu Mehta

Opis

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 ever-changing world."

Recenzje

Stunning. . . . A powerful, arresting work. . . . Marvelous. Los Angeles Times Book Review

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. The New York Times Book Review

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 ever-changing world.

What Dickens did for London, what Joseph Mitchell did for New York City, Suketu Mehta has done for Bombay. . . . A candid, extensive, and wholly entertaining portrait. San Diego Union-Tribune

The ultimate insider s view of Bombay, a roiling and vigorous account that delivers on a seemingly impossible challenge: how to limn the diversity and sprawl of such a place in a single book. The Seattle Times

Spis treści

PART ONE * POWER
Personal Geography
The Country of the No
Two Currencies
Powertoni
The 1992 93 Riots
Elections 1998
The Saheb
Mumbai
Number Two After Scotland Yard
Ajay Lal: The Blasts and the Gangwar
Encounter
Black-Collar Workers
Mohsin: The D-Company
Satish: The Dal Badlu
Chotta Shakeel: The Don in Exile

PART TWO * PLEASURE
Vadapav Eaters City
A City in Heat
Monalisa Dances
Golpitha
Two Lives: Honey/Manoj
New Year s Eve
Distilleries of Pleasure
Vidhu Vinod Chopra: Mission Kashmir
Mahesh Bhatt s Wound
The Struggler and the Goddess
Accused: Sanjay Dutt
Dreamworld/Underworld

PART THREE * PASSAGES
Memory Mines
Mayur Mahal Multipurpose
A World of Children
Sone ki Chidiya
Girish: A Tourist in His City
Babbanji: Runaway Poet
Adjust
Good-bye World
A Self in the Crowd

Afterword
Acknowledgments

O autorze

Suketu Mehta is a fiction writer and journalist based in New York. He has won the Whiting Writers Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta s other work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Granta, Harper s magazine, Time, Condé Nast Traveler, and The Village Voice, and has been featured on National Public Radio s All Things Considered. Mehta also cowrote Mission Kashmir, a Bollywood movie.