Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag — Rohinton Mistry

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