How can we forget the magic of ‘Maximum City‘! A book that redefined Mumbai for so many of us with an honest account of surviving in this city of dreams by the author himself. It showed us the ugliness along with its beauty, demystified the charms of Mumbai after taking us to the dizzy heights of money, power and glamour this city promises of. This masterpiece is incomparable when it comes to books on Mumbai.
Since then we have been dying to read the next book of Suketu Mehta again and our wait is finally over. His next book releases on 22nd August 2019 (yes, next week! Cannot KEEP CALM) and it looks exciting.
About the book
An impassioned defence of global immigration from the acclaimed author of maximum city. drawing on his family own experience emigrating from India to Britain and America and years of reporting around the world, Suketu Mehta subjects The worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. The West, he argues, is being destroyed not by immigrants but by the fear of immigrants.
He juxtaposes the phone narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of labourers, nannies and others, from Dubai to new York and explains why more people are on the move today than ever before. As Civil strife and Climate change reshape large parts of the planet, it is little surprise that borders have become so porous. this land is our land also stresses the destructive legacies of colonialism and global inequality on large swathes of the world. When today’s immigrants are asked, ‘why are you here?’, they can justly respond, ‘we are here because you were there.’ and now that they are here, as Mehta demonstrates, immigrants bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish. Impassioned, rigorous and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, this land is our land is a timely and necessary intervention and literary polemic of the highest order.
About the Author
Suketu Mehta is the author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award. His work has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s, Timeand GQ. He has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers’ Award and an O. Henry Prize. He was born in Calcutta and lives in New York City, where he is an associate professor of journalism at New York University.
Review
“A meticulously researched and deeply felt corrective to the public narrative of who today’s migrants are, why they are coming, and what economic and historical forces have propelled them from their homes into faraway lands… This Land Is Our Land reads like an impassioned survey course on migration, laying bare the origins of mass migration in searing clarity… well argued, cathartic and abundantly sourced.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“There are many mic-drop moments and eminently quotable lines… [This Land Is Our Land] is a blistering argument that earns its place in this emotional debate.” (Wall Street Journal)
“Written ‘in sorrow and anger’, this is a brilliant and urgently necessary book, eloquently making the case against bigotry and for all of us migrants – what we are not, who we are, and why we deserve to be welcomed, not feared.“ (Salman Rushdie)
“A powerful, passionate, angry, and hopeful cry for sanity and justice by one of our finest writers. Mehta’s heart-felt book is a much-needed and potent antidote to the anti-migrant rhetoric that has grown so threateningly loud of late. Let them come!” (Mohsin Hamid)
“Suketu Mehta has written a burning indictment of anti-immigrant hypocrisy… Rousing and immensely readable, it is an anthem for all of us.” (Jhumpa Lahiri)
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