Suketu Mehta

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Suketu Mehta is an acclaimed writer based in New York City. He was born in Calcutta, India and was raised in Mumbai where he lived until his family moved to the United States in 1977.

His autobiographical account of his experiences with the city of Mumbai, Maximum City, was published in 2004. The book explores the underbelly of the sprawling city. It was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is probably the finest travel book written by a contemporary Indian.

Suketu Mehta has also co-written the screenplay to the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir and was writing the Merchant-Ivory film The Goddess starring Tina Turner when Ismail Merchant died. He is now working on a book on New York.

Suketu lives in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, also home to other significant contemporary writers including Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem and Jhumpa Lahiri. In February 2005 National Geographic published an article by Suketu Mehta about Bollywood.

[edit] Awards

He won the Whiting Writers' Award in 1997.
He won the O. Henry Prize for his short story Gare du Nord published in Harper's Magazine in 1997.
He won a Fellowship of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for the book Maximum City.
Maximum City was also chosen as one of the books of the year 2004 by The Economist.
Maximum City won the 2005 Kiriyama Prize.