maximum city lost and found by suketu mehta

The effort to describe the city and its people's lives leads the author into the darker sides of Bombay, where corruption and murder abound. While researching Maximum City, Mehta and his family spent two years in Bombay while Mehta interviewed hundreds of people, from gangsters and policemen to successful Bollywood stars and the extremely poor, many of whom live without running water and often survided on the streets. 'The extreme or the maximum of violence, the max of non-violence-from the Jains to the hitmen-the maximum of sex, the maximum of commerce.' Mehta added that he 'wanted to look at the urban experience through Bombay, and Bombay is representative of a whole group of these major cities around the world.' 'All life and death are on evidence in the broad Bombay street,' Mehta said in his Ego online interview. It is also the city where the author lived until he was fourteen years old. In Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, Mehta turns his sight on the multitudes who live in Bombay, India, the largest city in the world in terms of population.

'I've always thought that my mission as a writer is to write about the human being struggling underneath the foot of history,' he told Ayesha K. SIDELIGHTS: Suketu Mehta began his career writing fiction and later became a journalist. WORK IN PROGRESS: A screenplay titled The Goddess. Cowriter of Mission Kashmir, a screenplay produced in Bollywood, India.

Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.Īrticles and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper's, Time, Condé Nast Traveler, and Village Voice. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (nonfiction), Alfred A. Henry Prize New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. Has appeared on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.ĪWARDS, HONORS: Kiriyama prize and Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005, both for Maximum City Whiting Writers Award O. Knopf, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Education: Graduate of New York University and Iowa Writers' Workshop.ĪDDRESSES: Agent-c/o Author Mail, Alfred A. PERSONAL: Born 1963, in Calcutta, India immigrated to United States, c.

Maximum city lost and found by suketu mehta