The Only City - Book Preview

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Financial capital, cradle of Bollywood, home to India's largest slum—Bombay is a megalopolis with many associations. But the one that's especially significant is this: it is a place of stories.

Featuring some of the best names in Indian
fiction—both emerging and established—this
extraordinary anthology frames the city through a range of vantage points. From the urchin lurking by Grant Road's railway overbridge to the screenwriter prowling the dance bars in Andheri; from the gay man cruising in a Dadar local to the artist hovering by a studio across the Danda shore—every character carries a critical Bombay fragment. Bombay is the only city that can grant them dimension.

Put together by novelist and editor Anindita Ghose, The Only City is perhaps the finest mirror yet to the sole corner in India that has captivated resident and tourist, actor and stockbroker—but especially, the writer.

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SCHEDULED Events

Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, Mumbai | 9 November, 2025
Broke Bibliophiles book club at Bombay Sweet Shop, Mumbai | 15 November, 2025
Koshala Literature Festival, Lucknow | 27-30 November, 2025
The Quorum Club, Mumbai | 4 December, 2025
[Bookstore] The Bookshop, Delhi | 14 December, 2025
National Book Trust of India Festival, Pune | 19-21 December, 2025
[Bookstore] Champaca Bookstore, Bengaluru | 20 December, 2025
Bhopal Literature and Arts Festival, Bhopal | 9-11 January, 2026
Kerala Literature Festival, Kozhikode | 22-25 January, 2026
Kolkata Literary Meet, Kolkata | 22-26 January, 2026
[Bookstore] Fictionary: Mumbai Literary Club, Mumbai | 31 January, 2026
Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai | 1–8 February, 2026
Goa Arts and Literature Festival (GALF) | 12-14 February, 2026

Praise for The Only City

Lovers and hustlers, migrants and dreamers—each carries a piece of Bombay. Together, their voices form a portrait of a city that is merciless, beautiful, and always alive.

— Sonia Faleiro

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If you're longing to read one new work of fiction about Bombay, The Only City is the only book you need to read. It gathers eighteen of the city's best writers in a Queen's Necklace of stories that celebrate and castigate the city in all its dazzling complexity. For Bombayites spread out all over the world like me, this marvellous anthology is the cheapest ticket home.

— Suketu Mehta

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The Only City showcases contemporary Mumbai at its best and worst, with Chirodeep Chaudhuri's quiet photographs serving as a counterpoint to the hectic lives in the stories. A literary exploration of Mumbai circa 2025 (with one fabulous futuristic tale), which will also serve as a historical record for future generations.

— Sooni Taraporevala

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Bombay can be your soulmate and friend. This city of plurality addresses everyone in the singular—"tere ko", "mere ko" are levellers. Everyone here is on the edge, and the balancing act becomes the dance of survival. The Only City, thoughtfully put together by Anindita Ghose, has eighteen strikingly restless Bombay stories, each with a distinct voice amidst the layered noise; each striving for a moment of change.

Some of the images that live on are: redeveloped apartments named after Italian islands, money-plant chawls, the vanishing sea, private nurses in their crisp uniforms, the grille between the first- and second-class local train compartments, the Bombil-scented breeze, sacks of khadi sakhar, yawning mansions, maharajas posing as tamed cats on the walls, electric-blue fingernails … Characters move from one story to another as if from one train compartment to another. They are bound to this insomniac dream city and its lights in their own ways. A line from Shanta Gokhale's story says it all: "Being everybody is the best thing for a storyteller. But being everybody is always not being everybody."

— Jayant Kaikini