Swimming Lessons

Firozsha Baag is an apartment building in Bombay. Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new. "A fine collection...the volume is informed by a tone of gentle compassion for seemingly insignificant lives."--Michiko Kakutani,New York Times

Rohinton Mistry is the author of a collection of short stories, Tale from Firozsha Baag (1987), and two internationally acclaimed novels. Such a Long Journey (1991) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Governor General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, and the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award. A Fine Balance (1995) won the prestigious Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and The Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Award. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. Mistry was the recipient of the 1995 Canada-Australia Literary Prize.