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Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers

By: Katherine Boo
Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
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About this listen

National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2012

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption.

With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter - Annawadi’s "most-everything girl" - will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a 15-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy". But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal.

As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

©2012 Katherine Boo (P)2013 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd India Literature & Fiction Poverty & Homelessness South Asia Urban

Critic Reviews

"[An] exquisitely accomplished first book. Novelists dream of defining characters this swiftly and beautifully, but Ms. Boo is not a novelist. She is one of those rare, deep-digging journalists who can make truth surpass fiction, a documentarian with a superb sense of human drama. She makes it very easy to forget that this book is the work of a reporter…. Comparison to Dickens is not unwarranted." (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)
"The book plays out like a swift, richly plotted novel…. Boo gives even the broadest themes (the collateral damage of globalization, say) a human face. And there are half a dozen characters here so indelible - so swept up in impossible dreams and schemes - that they call Dickens and Austen to mind." ( Entertainment Weekly)
"Must read. Katherine Boo Behind the Beautiful Forevers. A Mumbai slum understood and imagined as never before in language of intense beauty." (Salman Rushdie)

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stunning

I loved listening to this after actually
reading it. Very powerful book. Excellent narration. Katherine Boo has challenged my world view.

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Fascinating!

Great read. A big eye opener to the life of an Indian slum. definitely recommended

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Children matter!

I lived in India in the mid 90's and had the pleasure of meeting many children of the streets. I would say to one "do you know where I can rent a truck to move my things?" The children would rally around and within half an hour my stuff would be on its way to my rented abode. As in Katherine's story I found the kids masters of their environments but I never saw the deapth of anguish her children suffered. The difference between living in a mega city is insurmountable. Tears for these children and their long suffering families.

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