Books That Bring the City of Mumbai to Life
Via Electric Literature
The Story
A curated reading list from Electric Literature, assembled by novelist Reema Patel, gathers seven books that bring the city of Mumbai to life through fiction and nonfiction.
Suketu Mehta's nonfiction Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found explores the lives of bar dancers, filmmakers, migrant workers, and gang members across the metropolis.
Vikram Chandra's 900 page Sacred Games follows a police officer and a gangster through Mumbai's underworld and film industry corruption, while Aravind Adiga's Last Man in Tower turns a developer's buyout offer into a battle among neighbors.
Jeet Thayil's hallucinatory Narcopolis traces the city's opium culture from the 1970s onward, and Amrita Mahale's Milk Teeth follows childhood friendships amid 1990s urban change.
Sonia Faleiro's Beautiful Thing goes inside Bombay's dance bars through an ambitious dancer named Leela, and Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers examines the Annawadi slum near the airport.
Together the selections offer a layered portrait of a city defined by extreme wealth and poverty, relentless reinvention, and colonial history.
Suketu Mehta's nonfiction Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found explores the lives of bar dancers, filmmakers, migrant workers, and gang members across the metropolis.
Vikram Chandra's 900 page Sacred Games follows a police officer and a gangster through Mumbai's underworld and film industry corruption, while Aravind Adiga's Last Man in Tower turns a developer's buyout offer into a battle among neighbors.
Jeet Thayil's hallucinatory Narcopolis traces the city's opium culture from the 1970s onward, and Amrita Mahale's Milk Teeth follows childhood friendships amid 1990s urban change.
Sonia Faleiro's Beautiful Thing goes inside Bombay's dance bars through an ambitious dancer named Leela, and Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers examines the Annawadi slum near the airport.
Together the selections offer a layered portrait of a city defined by extreme wealth and poverty, relentless reinvention, and colonial history.
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