Maximum City

Suketu Mehta's impressive and expansive non-fiction book about modern Mumbai is the definitive book about this massive city. Mehta juxtaposes his return as an adult to Mumbai as a journalist with an epic deconstruction of its many sides featuring a cast of hitmen, dancing girls, cops, movie stars, poets, beggars and politicians, bringing the city to life through their lives.

We learn about Mumbai's intricate Rent Act that results in chronic squatting; the dance bars where men go to watch girls dance in saris to Bollywood numbers, falling in love with them; the Mumbai riots and religions tensions orchestrated by political parties; and the gangsters at the heart of everything, from the street children to Bollywood to politics to petty violence, pulling the puppet strings from exiles in Lahore and Dubai.

This may be real life but it reads like Slumdog Millionaire, it sounds like a film. It reads like an odyssey, an undercover investigation and an insider's knowledge, without ever compromising the documentarian's eye for detail, whether it be the sombre colours of the fallen heroine's sari or the strange vocal tick of the hitman, this book is Byzantine in scope and meticulous in detail. Travel to Mumbai without it at your peril. No, really.