Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Softcover

Boo, Katherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081297932X ISBN 13: 9780812979329

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER · NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER · NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE

“Inspiring . . . extraordinary . . . [Katherine Boo] shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.”—People

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times · The Washington Post · O: The Oprah Magazine · USA Today · New York · The Miami Herald · San Francisco Chronicle · Newsday

In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.

As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. 

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget. 

WINNER OF: The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award · The Los Angeles Times Book Prize · The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award · The New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker · People · Entertainment Weekly · The Wall Street Journal · The Boston Globe · The Economist · Financial Times · Newsweek/The Daily Beast · Foreign Policy · The Seattle Times · The Nation · St. Louis Post-Dispatch · The Denver Post · Minneapolis Star Tribune · Salon · The Plain Dealer · The Week · Kansas City Star · Slate · Time Out New York · Publishers Weekly

About this title

Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2012: Katherine Boo spent three years among the residents of the Annawadi slum, a sprawling, cockeyed settlement of more than 300 tin-roof huts and shacks in the shadow of Mumbai’s International Airport. From within this “sumpy plug of slum” Boo unearths stories both tragic and poignant--about residents’ efforts to raise families, earn a living, or simply survive. These unforgettable characters all nurture far-fetched dreams of a better life. As one boy tells his brother: “Everything around us is roses. And we’re like the s**t in between.” A New Yorker writer and recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur “Genius” grant, Boo’s writing is superb and the depth and courage of her reporting from this hidden world is astonishing. At times, it’s hard to believe this is nonfiction. --Neal Thompson

About the Author

Katherine Boo is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. For the last decade, she has divided her time between the United States and India. This is her first book.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 081297932X
• ISBN 13: 9780812979329
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288