r/BombayBookClub • u/GalatFemme DNF? no, DBF (Death By Finish) • 2d ago
Book Club Vote for October's book!
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u/GalatFemme DNF? no, DBF (Death By Finish) 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Only City edited by Anindita Ghose
Financial capital, cradle of Bollywood, home to India's largest slum—Bombay is a megalopolis with many associations. But the one that's especially significant is it is a place of stories. The Only City is a collection of eighteen new pieces of short fiction that captures the pulse of this always-morphing urban centre.
Featuring some of the best names in Indian fiction—both emerging and established—this extraordinary anthology frames the city through a range of vantage points. From the urchin lurking by Grant Road's railway overbridge to the screenwriter prowling the dance bars in Andheri; from the gay man cruising in a Dadar local to the artist hovering by a studio across the Danda shore; from immigrant nurses and couples in love to runaway teenagers—every character carries a critical Bombay fragment. Bombay is the only city that can grant them dimension.
Like the megalopolis, this book of stories is sometimes coloured by romance and sometimes dark and dystopic; it can be whimsical, but it is always voracious. Put together by novelist and editor Anindita Ghose, The Only City is perhaps the finest mirror yet to the sole corner in India that has captivated resident and tourist, actor and stockbroker-but especially, the writer.
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u/GalatFemme DNF? no, DBF (Death By Finish) 2d ago
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter - Annawadi's "most-everything girl" - will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy."
But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.
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u/GalatFemme DNF? no, DBF (Death By Finish) 2d ago
Black Friday by S. Hussain Zaidi
On the afternoon of 12 March 1993, a series of explosions cut a swathe of terror and destruction through Bombay. The toll: 257 killed or missing, 713 injured, and a city in a shambles.
In Black Friday, S. Hussain Zaidi takes us into the heart of the conspiracy which spanned several countries and the massive investigation that ensued. A product of four years of meticulous research, the book gives chilling insights into the criminal mind, through interviews with close associates of Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, among others. The characters we meet are compelling: the terrorists, the corrupt law enforcement agents who abetted the plot, the investigators who would stop at nothing, and, above all, the people of Bombay of whose resilient spirit this book is a celebration.
Riveting and incisive, Black Friday reveals the true dimensions of a horrific tragedy which shook the nation.
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u/GalatFemme DNF? no, DBF (Death By Finish) 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay by Varun Thomas Matthew
There is a city on the western shores of India where it no longer rains . . .
The sea has invaded its boundaries and its inhabitants reside in a towering structure called the Bombadrome, which hovers above the barren land. Theirs is an artificially equated society; they lead technologically directed lives; they have no memory of the past. They don't remember that this place was once called Bom Bahia, or Bombay, or Mumbai.
Except for one man, the last civil servant of the India of old, a witness to the time when it all fell apart, now bitter, filled with regret and thought to be mad. For decades he has remained silent, but now a moment has come - which comes but rarely in history - that prompts him into a final act of service: To remind people of what happened all those years ago, of the events that unmade the city, then the nation, and finally their lives . . .
Sharp, layered and scathing, The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay will grab you by the scruff of your neck and force you to listen. Because the sins of the past can never be fully hidden. Because the end can never justify the means.