PRAISE FOR MAXIMUM CITY
“Suketu Mehta tells the stories of slum-dwellers, dancing girls, hitmen and poets, all of whom have come to Bombay to make it. With a clear but non-judgmental voice, his is an outstanding tale of the exhilarating city in which he grew up.”
“In Mehta’s able hands, Bombay is transformed from a mere flap of earth on India’s western coast to a living, breathing character, a shimmering prism refracting the light and lives of its inhabitants.With a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s descriptive flair, Mehta details the city’s gangsters, policemen, go-go dancers, and Bollywood stars. Part travelog, part cultural history, this vibrant portrait is greater than the sum of its parts.”— Library Journal
Chosen by The Advertiser, Australia, as one of the books of the year.
Chosen as one of the 10 best books of 2004 by India Today.
“Dazzling and absorbing… Mehta’s eye on Bombay reminds me of no one’s so much as Balzac’s on Paris… He makes virtually any other reporting on India look pallid by comparison, the work of outsiders looking in… Maximum City–gritty and unsentimental, but by its breathtaking boldness and scope a paean to this impossible city–is Mehta’s garland for Bombay.”—Adam Hochschild, Harper’s Magazine
“Maximum City is, in all senses, a revelation… The stories are gripping…amid the squalor, there is wild, wild fun…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. Bombay is truly here lost ‹ and found.”" —The Times
“In Mehta’s able hands, Bombay is transformed from a mere flap of earth on India’s western coast to a living, breathing character, a shimmering prism refracting the light and lives of its inhabitants.With a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s descriptive flair, Mehta details the city’s gangsters, policemen, go-go dancers, and Bollywood stars. Part travelog, part cultural history, this vibrant portrait is greater than the sum of its parts.”— Library Journal
“In Mehta’s able hands, Bombay is transformed from a mere flap of earth on India’s western coast to a living, breathing character, a shimmering prism refracting the light and lives of its inhabitants.With a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s descriptive flair, Mehta details the city’s gangsters, policemen, go-go dancers, and Bollywood stars. Part travelog, part cultural history, this vibrant portrait is greater than the sum of its parts.”— Library Journal
“In Mehta’s able hands, Bombay is transformed from a mere flap of earth on India’s western coast to a living, breathing character, a shimmering prism refracting the light and lives of its inhabitants.With a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s descriptive flair, Mehta details the city’s gangsters, policemen, go-go dancers, and Bollywood stars. Part travelog, part cultural history, this vibrant portrait is greater than the sum of its parts.”— Library Journal
“In Mehta’s able hands, Bombay is transformed from a mere flap of earth on India’s western coast to a living, breathing character, a shimmering prism refracting the light and lives of its inhabitants.With a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s descriptive flair, Mehta details the city’s gangsters, policemen, go-go dancers, and Bollywood stars. Part travelog, part cultural history, this vibrant portrait is greater than the sum of its parts.”— Library Journal
“Maximum City is, in all senses, a revelation… The stories are gripping…amid the squalor, there is wild, wild fun…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. Bombay is truly here lost ‹ and found.”" —The Times
“In Mehta’s able hands, Bombay is transformed from a mere flap of earth on India’s western coast to a living, breathing character, a shimmering prism refracting the light and lives of its inhabitants.With a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s descriptive flair, Mehta details the city’s gangsters, policemen, go-go dancers, and Bollywood stars. Part travelog, part cultural history, this vibrant portrait is greater than the sum of its parts.”— Library Journal
“In Mehta’s able hands, Bombay is transformed from a mere flap of earth on India’s western coast to a living, breathing character, a shimmering prism refracting the light and lives of its inhabitants.With a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s descriptive flair, Mehta details the city’s gangsters, policemen, go-go dancers, and Bollywood stars. Part travelog, part cultural history, this vibrant portrait is greater than the sum of its parts.”—— Journal
“Suketu Mehta tells the stories of slum-dwellers, dancing girls, hitmen and poets, all of whom have come to Bombay to make it. With a clear but non-judgmental voice, his is an outstanding tale of the exhilarating city in which he grew up.” — The Economist