7 Must-Read Books that aptly define the 'Life in Mumbai City'

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil: Beginning in the 1970s and carrying us to the recent past, Narcopolis is a haunting, hallucinatory novel about Bombay’s opium culture

Reema Patel, author of 'Such Big Dreams'

Beautiful Thing- Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro: is a non-fiction book on the life of Leela, an ambitious young bar dancer and her journey through brothels and tiny flats as she tries to carve out a better life for herself and fights to survive

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta: The author takes his readers on a whirlwind ride through the sprawling city of Bombay that symbolizes the Indian dream for many migrants. The book chronicles the lives of migrant workers, bar dancers, filmmakers, rival gang members, politicians, offering social commentary on the interplay between power, pleasure, corruption and labour

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra: charts the story of a police officer and a larger-than-life gangster in a game of cat and mouse. The book takes the reader through the gritty underworld, to the corruption of the film industry

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo: This book of non-fiction is about the residents of Annawadi, a sprawling slum flanked by the international airport and a handful of gleaming luxury hotels. Never patronizing, never romanticizing, Boo carefully digs into the abject conditions of her subjects and the complications of crushing poverty

Milk Teeth by Amrita Mahale: Set in the 1990s, Milk Teeth charts the relationship between two childhood friends as their neighbourhood teeters on the brink of change. Digging into nostalgia, urbanization, and the notion that a city is an amalgamation of communities, Mahale highlights the absolute freedom that Bombay life can offer as well as the claustrophobic societal conditions from which unmarried women, queer men, and minorities search for a reprieve

Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga: In this novel, a ruthless developer offers the occupants of a crumbling old apartment building a buyout so he can build a luxury high-rise tower and read these books to know more