Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Katherine Boo (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 7, 2012

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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

From Booklist

While the distance between rich and poor is growing in the U.S., the gap between the haves and have-nots in India is staggering to behold. This first book by a New Yorker staff writer (and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the Washington Post) jolts the reader’s consciousness with the opposing realities of poverty and wealth in a searing visit to the Annawaldi settlement, a flimflam slum that has recently sprung up in the western suburbs of the gigantic city of Mumbai, perched tentatively along the modern highway leading to the airport and almost within a stone’s throw of new, luxurious hotels. We first meet Abdul, whose daily grind is to collect trash and sell it; in doing so, he has “lifted his large family above subsistence.” Boo takes us all around the community, introducing us to a slew of disadvantaged individuals who, nevertheless, draw on their inner strength to not only face the dreary day but also ponder a day to come that will, perhaps, be a little brighter. Sympathetic yet objective and eloquently rendered. --Brad Hooper

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 7, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781400067558
• ISBN-13: 978-1400067558
• ASIN: 1400067553
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (687 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > History > Asia > India
  • #2 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Globalization
  • #2 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Poverty

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

611 of 626 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Just too painful to realize that all of this is real January 12, 2012

By Linda Linguvic HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The author of this book is an American Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who is married to an Indian man. She has spent the last few years doing scrupulous research for this book which is a realistic portrayal of life in a Mumbai slum. All the people are real. All the incidents really happened. And the writing itself is so good that it hooked me from the very beginning and kept my eyes glued to the pages.

This is a world where whole families live in cardboard shacks where sewage runs raw after storms, education is mostly nonexistent and the worst forms of corruption is everywhere. Here we meet the real people in the area - the young boy who scavenges scrap metal, a woman who tries to be political and the one college student who hopes for a brighter future. We also learn about the diseases that disable people and the compromises made just in order to put some food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. And then there is the endemic corruption. The police are paid little and depend on graft to make a living. expect to collect it whenever they can. Hospitals are filthy stink holes. And members of the community are so afraid of getting involved that they will let a man with a broken leg lie in the street for several days until he eventually dies.

The book is so well written that it brought me into the hearts and minds of these people who live in the shadow of a luxury hotel and an expanding airport. In spite of their poverty they have learned to be resourceful and struggle along the best they can.

The book reads like a novel. And, in a way I sure wish it was. It is just too painful to realize that this is all real. Hopefully, its publication will help to make a difference.

272 of 282 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic achievement of narrative, immersed reporting December 23, 2011

By Nathan Webster TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

"Embedded journalism" is often applied only to military journalists, but it's not a new style at all. Author Katherine Boo basically embedded herself in this slum of Mumbai, India, so readers could see, hear, and - to a degree - understand the lives of the residents. Her 'characters' face daily lives that I don't think an American could deal with for five minutes.

The book succeeds because it lacks sympathy - which is a good thing. The girls, boys, men, women are fully-realized people, not cariactures of "poor, pathetic Indians." In an author's Q+A, Boo says conveying that was important to her, and she did succeed. So the narrative is harsh, depressing, uncompromising, and sad - but it's uplifting, because the girls, boys, and adults in Boo's book are going to keep on living the best they can. They aren't begging for my or your help - they're getting up in the morning and doing what they can do to make it through each day, though some don't make it. I felt like I learned about their individual stories and lives, and about the Mumbai slums - a place I'll never see - at least a little bit, and without being preached at.

The details came from Boo's close observations of events she witnessed, and hundreds of interviews after the fact. An argument could be made, "how reliable could interviews with slumdwellers be?" Well, how reliable are you, when somebody asks about your life? People are people, and I'm sure once they got to used to Boo's presence, they liked having somebody new to talk to. I've embedded with the military as a journalist, and after a few days even soldiers who dislike the media stop seeing reporters as the "press," and as just another guy. I'm sure it was the same here.

The book is not written in first person, which Boo defends as a way to make sure the focus remains on her characters, never on her. I agree, to a point. If this was in the "I" of a white westerner (though she's married to an Indian), it would change the reader's perspective. However, I think her presence changed the story and possibly the events more than she seems to think. The book opens with a tragedy, and I wonder if the extra attention Boo paid to the main family of the book led to jealousy within the slum community that might have led to the tragedy that followed. I have no idea. But the "I" is always there, whether written first person or not; the writer can't have it both ways, and I would have liked a little more acknowledgement of that within the narrative.

But, I loved this book - not 'love' like I wanted more, but because it captured a part of the human spirit I forgot exists. There are 7-8 billion people in the world, and far too many live in situations like these Mumbai slums - but they live and create and work all the same, despite rampant corruption by those supposed to protect them, and little chance for upward mobility. If you want to learn more about a half-dozen of those people, who you'll never meet, and whose lifestyle you'll likely never experience, this book opens that door a little bit. For those who talk about the concept of a "global economy," here it is for real.

160 of 173 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Life and death in a Mumbai slum December 25, 2011

By Anne M. Hunter VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The interwoven stories of some of the 335 families in a tiny half-acre slum surrounded by luxury hotels at Mumbai's international airport reach out and grab the reader and pull you right in for a ride that I found to be intense and at times very painful. The author did intensive years-long research, interviewing,
videotaping, finding records, and hanging around until she was just part of
the environment. She makes herself invisible, not injecting her presence,
which I really enjoyed. Her point of view is clear, however.

The people in these slums are mostly from other states in India
besides Maharasthra, where Bombay is located, and many are either of the
untouchable caste, or Muslim. Rather than forming a community to try
to fight to survive and prosper, the adults fight among themselves,
trying to cheat and steal from each other. The young people seem less
vicious and corrupt, as they have more hope and less understanding of
how calamities can come out of nowhere, just as things seem to be
getting better, and tear everything down again. The police, the local
government, and the poor people are alike in their corruption,
demanding money from the desperate to fix things. The lack of
compassion and any sense of justice was distressing. The condition
of the women and girls was horrible. A serial killer may have been
picking off garbage scavenger boys, but the police record their
deaths as being from illness, so they don't have to bother looking
for a killer.

Children are not allowed by law to work, even if that's the only way they can
eat. The law is only enforced as a way for the police to extort money
from them. In an orphanage run by nuns, goods sent by western
charities for the children are instead sold for money to support the
nuns, who ride in nice vehicles. In schools, eachers only show up
when inspectors will be there checking. Government social action attempts
are deflected into the pockets of politicians and phony non-profit
organizations. A dying neighbor is just another occasion to try to extort
money. The poor hate and fight each other instead of working together to
try improve their lot. It seemed to me that the sticky weight of corruption
holds everybody down, as the pollution and disease kills them.

It was news to me that suicide was an everyday fact in the lives
of the poor in India.

I long to know what happened to these people, who became so real to me
in this book. Despite the anguish it caused me, I highly recommend it
to everybody who is interested in India. I've read enormous numbers of
novels about India, but this nonfiction book, which feels in many ways like
fiction, moved me and frustrated me. I would have liked illustrations, a
bibliography, and perhaps some tables. I look forward to reading the
author's future work.