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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
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NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST 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 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST
… More »NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST 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 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 From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. 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 fifteen-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. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget. From the Hardcover edition.
« Less[life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity]
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Add a CommentLoved this book, but was shocked when I read that it was a true story well researched by Ms. Boo. That made it all the more moving and poignant.
Engaging. Sad. A story about the poorest of the poor in the slums of India and their daily hardships. It is also a book of dreams/hope where sometimes there is none. Sure makes you appreciate the comforts of home.
More fiction than fact in this reporter-written "narrative nonfiction" book.
Read for the library's non-fiction book club (February 2013 - Crystal Lake Public Library). I liked it because it read like a novel and not just a list of facts, and also because it helps you see what life is like by those who live it everyday in the slums of India, right next to the burgeoning wealthier class. I felt it was a truthful account that tried to lay out how things work and why for some of the poorest people in the world. It makes you appreciate when you have your water shut off or heat shut off because of lack of money. This happens to those of us who are underpaid in the U.S. at least a few times a year, but it is a normal part of their lives to never even have it to begin with, so despite our struggles in the U.S., we should definitely appreciate what we have no matter what the circumstances. I definitely would recommend this book to those interested in contemporary life in India and those who want to appreciate what they have and the meaning of working smart in dire situations.
This is an unrelentingly grim portrait of life in a Mumbai, India slum. Having said that, it is a must read. There is no more compelling evidence that poverty is the greatest evil.
Very sad, but true. Well Written and truly shows you the way life really is apart from "our own comfortable little world".
Brilliantly realized portrait of life in a Mumbai slum. The non-fiction book of the year -- that reads like a novel.
This title won the 2012 National Book Award and is considered by many to be one of the best non-fiction titles of the year.
Becky & Paul's BC
This non-fiction bk didn't mean much to me because I've read & loved the cozy mysteries set in modern India by Tarquin Hall. I would have liked to know more of the gritty details of trash sorting in India. Depressing to think people are small-minded & petty the whole world over.