The Book Prize Index

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

Suketu Mehta

Bombay's story, told through the lives, often desperately near the edge, of some of the people who live there. The complex texture of these extraordinary tales is threaded together by Suketu Mehta's own history of growing up in Bombay and returning to live there after a 21-year absence. Hitmen, dancing girls, cops, movie stars, poets, beggars and politicians - Suketu looked at the city through their eyes, and in looking found the city within himself.

Society & CultureSociety & Culture · medium confidenceSociety & Culture81 signalsLlm Classifier: Society & Culture -> Society & CultureKeyword Classifier: Society & Culture -> Society & CultureTopic Classifier: Housing, Cities & Urban Life -> Society & CultureHousing, Cities & Urban LifeMigration & DiasporaClass, Poverty & Inequality

Award History

0 wins · 2 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionMajor2005FinalistSecondary source
Pulitzer Prize in General NonfictionMajor2005FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (2)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    • Bombay92%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    Bombay’s story is best understood through the lives of people living precariously, and by Suketu Mehta returning to the city after long absence to find the city within himself.

    Model confidence 62%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 80%.