It is rare that a book is a deeply moving love story with unforgettable characters while also illuminating a country and a culture. Saumya Roy's book is a riveting love story set in the harrowing world of life as a trash picker on Mumbai's garbage mountain. Read it for a most delicious story, read it to understand India, read it to know what it is like to grow up in extreme poverty in the shadow of enormous wealth. If you read one book about India, read this one -- Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of The Cure
Roy writes ... with utmost care and empathy ... [a] powerful book * Times of India *
A terrific and thrilling book about people who are trapped in the gravitational force of a garbage mountain in Mumbai. Delightful and powerful * Manu Joseph, author of Serious Men *
Roy has a journalist's unflinching eye, a poet's talent for detail, and a radical sense of empathy that illuminates this account of the people who live on the Deonar garbage mountains. Urgent as a thriller, yet lingering in its unforgettable portraits of life, love and death, Mountain Tales deserves every accolade. A stunning achievement -- Kiran Desai, Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss
Saumya Roy's gorgeous Mountain Tales is a remarkable feat of immersive reporting and story-telling, a deeply-felt exploration of ideas, and a gripping chronicle of the fates of the garbage-pickers of Mumbai; Roy immerses you so deeply in her characters' lives and physical environment that at times I felt I was experiencing them myself. I loved this book -- Suzy Hansen, author of Notes on a Foreign Country
Roy unravels the truth about overconsumption, pollution, climate change and how the most vulnerable people bear the brunt of it all * Vogue India *
A gut-wrenching story ... her lucid writing not only draws the reader but also helps to reflect upon how one person's trash impacts another's life -- Soma Basu * The Hindu *
Gorgeous and heartbreaking ... Roy succeeds in humanizing her subjects while emphasizing the role that consumer culture plays in their degradation. ... Readers of Behind the Beautiful Forevers will be drawn to this harrowing portrait * Publishers Weekly *
A story of selflessness and sacrifice, of acceptance and renewal. The goodness in people, both in the streets where the Shaikh family lives and beyond comes to the fore ... A sense of mystery and wonderment gives Roy's tale a special edge -- Mustansir Dalvi * Wire India *
