Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
Katherine Boo
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.
- Author
- Katherine Boo
- Original title
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
- Edition published
- February 7, 2012
- First published
- April 8, 2012
- Publication year
- 2012
- Goodreads rating
- 3.98/5 from 119,146 ratings and 12,601 reviews
- Purchased
- December 25, 2016 · kindle
- Publisher
- Random House
- Edition
- Kindle Edition · 278 pages
- Language
- English
- Genres
- Nonfiction, India, Book Club, History, Audiobook, Asia, Poverty, Sociology, Travel, Journalism
- Awards
- Pulitzer Prize · General Nonfiction · nominee · 2013; National Book Award · Nonfiction · winner · 2012; Guardian First Book Award · nominee · 2012; PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction · winner · 2013; Helen Bernstein Book Award · Excellence in Journalism · winner · 2013; Los Angeles Times Book Prize · Current Interest · winner · 2012; Dayton Literary Peace Prize · Nonfiction · nominee · 2013; National Book Critics Circle Award · General Nonfiction · nominee · 2012; Ryszard Kapuściński Prize · nominee · 2013; NAIBA Book of the Year · Nonfiction · winner · 2012; Andrew Carnegie Medal · Nonfiction · nominee · 2013; Goodreads Choice Award · Nonfiction · nominee · 2012; The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction · nominee · 2012; Goodreads Choice Award · Readers' Favorite Nonfiction · nominee · 2012
- ISBN
- 9781400067558
- Added
- December 25, 2016
- Times read
- 1
- Owned copies
- 1
- Goodreads
- Book record