Bombay Before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos edited by Prashant Kidambi, Manjiri Kamat and Rachel Dwyer. Published in 2019 by Viking, a part of Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 7th Floor, Infinity Tower C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon 122002; website: www.penguin.co.in. Pp: xxiii + 428. Price: Rs 999.
Edited collections of scholarly essays tend to be fairly tedious reads, worse when they are conference volumes, and even more so when they are festschrifts in honor of some senior scholar. Such books too often resemble mediocre smorgasbords: a wide variety of reheated dishes that go together poorly. This is......