A Room in Bombay

'Rooms in Bombay are not big in size, but huge in heart. Manil Suri's memoir will make you want to hug your mother. Written in clean, direct prose and without sentimentality, it explores all the dimensions of the complicated bond between parent and child — while also being laugh-out-loud funny. If you were born of a mother, read this book.' — Suketu Mehta

'Written with a rare blend of compassion and honesty, Manil Suri's memoir dares to map the death of Bombay's most potent and seductive dream: the redevelopment of real estate. We watch with sick fascination as the lives of a dashing young man who wants to sing for Bollywood and his headstrong and practical wife implode into ill health, and we ache for their son who makes his escape to the US but must deal with his guilt. This is a Bombay story like few others.' — Jerry Pinto

'A deeply affecting memoir in which the ""room"", like a prison of the mind, acquires the force of metaphor-a symbol of all that we must escape in order to be more truly ourselves, and all that we never quite can.' — Aatish Taseer

'This room that has been my crucible, controlled and tormented and driven me-how much has it shaped my history, my current self?'

Author Manil Suri grows up in a large, crumbling flat in Bombay which his Hindu parents share with three Muslim families. Their single room is a refuge from the religious and territorial tensions ravaging the apartment. But it is also a prison that holds them captive — one that makes Manil's playback-singer father drift towards alcoholism and his mother towards increasing isolation, while restraining Manil from exploring the dawning realization that he might be gay.

As the shared room shapes the consciousness of its residents, we find ourselves asking: Will Manil manage to break free from the flat and find the freedom to embrace his sexuality? Will his mother dare step beyond the threshold of an unfulfilling marriage to pursue deeper, riskier joys?

Set against the backdrop of a fast-transforming city, where the price of real estate keeps rising and neighbours conspire to take over any available space, A Room in Bombay is as much about a physical enclosure as it is about the human capacity to reach beyond through the sheer power of imagination. At its heart, this is a deeply moving memoir — drawn from over 2,700 letters Manil wrote to his mother across three decades — that bears testimony to the abiding, unbreakable bond tying mother and son.