Bombay Reading List

When I’m in a new place I really enjoy reading fiction set in and around that place. Since I have so much free time here, I have done a lot of reading! Books upon books have stacked up in our place—all sorts of novels, but especially a lot of works by Indian authors and stories set in India. I wanted to post a few recommendations of novels that feature Bombay for those of you who want to get a richer picture of the city from some people who can really write! If I come across any other books worth mentioning in the upcoming months, I’ll add them to the list as well.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is an extremely moving and well-written novel that explores the lives of the city’s poor immigrants, the living they make, the hardships they face, the people they meet and their ability to navigate the gray areas between hope and despair. The novel tells the story of two tailors who immigrate to Bombay during The Emergency years of the nineteen seventies. They find work with a young Parsi widow and befriend her tenant, a young engineering student. As they struggle to live in the sometimes welcoming, sometimes terrifying city of Bombay. If you enjoy this book, check out A Family Matter also by Mistry. This novel gives a rich depiction of Parsi life in 1970s Bombay. There are some very memorable scenes involving religion, superstition, bureaucracy, and community and mob mentality. In both novels Misty thoroughly and memorably depicts life in Bombay, the city becoming almost another character in the stories.

If you enjoy magic realism (in the vein of Murakami, Garcia Marquez, et al) like I do, then I recommend Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. It is the story of Saleem Sinai, born at midnight on August 15, 1947, the exact date and time of India’s independence. The coincidence of his birth links Saleem inextricably to the birth and trajectory of the young nation. The special hour of his birth also has unexpected consequences: he is given telepathic powers that allow him to communicate with all of “midnight’s children” born in the initial hour of India’s independence. As Rushdie lets Saleem tell his story, he paints a picture of post-partition India and Pakistan that is both serious and comedic. I just finished this novel and really enjoyed it, often chuckling aloud at the clever observations and dark humor of this fantastical tale. (On a personal note, I especially enjoyed reading it while living here in Mumbai as Rushdie references many places and events that I have experienced myself. Saleem grows up just up the road from our neighborhood in Breach Candy and thus references many of the landmarks that John and I use to orient ourselves on a daily basis.)

Baumgartner’s Bombay by Anita Desai is the story of Hugo Baumgartner, a German-born Jew who, after leaving his home country, finds a home of sorts in Bombay. Always an outsider, Baumgartner is closest to his many adopted cats, and his only routine task is scavenging in the city and visiting tea shops to collect scraps for them. His sole human confidante is Lotte, an ex-cabaret dancer and German expatriate, until he unexpectedly meets a young German hippie whose presence in his life has profound results. Desai is an incredibly talented writer who is able to string words together in moving and delightful ways. I highly recommend her books to anyone who dapples in writing—there is a lot to learn from reading her work. Her descriptions of Bombay are very vivid and her characters complex and believable. ( I also recommend her novel Clear Light of Day, a character-driven story which takes place in the outskirts of Delhi.)

Of course I feel obligated to mention Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. This adventure tale of an escaped Australian convict navigating the Bombay underworld is immensely popular with travelers here. You can’t go a week without seeing a well-thumbed copy in the hands of some backpacker carrying an overstuffed rucksack. This fast-paced tale is semi-autobiographical but officially labeled a work of fiction. At the risk of sounding snobbish, I have to admit that I was not as enamored with this book as many people I’ve talked to were, and in fact I didn’t even finish it. I found the writing style a bit amateurish and personally I don’t have much patience for pop-philosophizing which seeps up through the tale from time to time. That said, there is always a time and place for a quick and easy adventure book, and in conversation I hear more rave reviews than harsh criticisms. And if you’re one of those people who has to read the book before seeing the movie, now is the time to pick up Shantaram. Word on the street is that Johnny Depp has bought the rights to the story and hired an Indian director to shoot the film starring Depp in the lead role.

So if you have some free time or are looking for a good read, check out some of these Bombay novels. And feel free to post your reviews as comments on this page. I would love to hear the impressions of other readers!