Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

By: Katherine Boo

Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra

Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

National Book Award Winner

New York Times best seller.

Named one of Time’s 10 best nonfiction books of the decade.

One of the 10 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 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 listener headlong into one of the 21st century’s hidden worlds - and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.

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, Foreign Policy, The Seattle Times, The Nation, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Denver Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Week, Kansas City Star, Slate, and Publishers Weekly.

©2012 Katherine Boo (P)2012 Random House

Critic reviews

Winner of the PEN Nonfiction Award

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award

Winner of the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award

“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)

“A tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.” (Judges, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award)

is a very jarring book about life in Annawadi

Behind the Beautiful Forever" is a very jarring book about life in Annawadi, a slum located near the Mumbai airport, just steps away from luxury Indian hotels. This true story chronicles the lives of multiple Annawadi residents who struggle to survive and pray to get ahead in this god-awful community.

Like a novel

This is an amazing book, it's all real but it reads like a novel. Highly recommended!

Very easy to listen to

What did you love best about Behind the Beautiful Forevers?

It was amazing to listen to - with the diversity of the names and places, listening was much more enjoyable than reading would have been.

A little too depressing

having spent a little time with the poor in India living in the small homes a lot of this story is accurate but the author leaves out a lot of the simple joy that also exists all be it brief. I found these people to posess a wicked sense of humor. unfortunately alcoholism is also a real scourge in these areas leaving a lot of wo men who do not drink for the most part to do most of the work which in India is a double burden

Commendable

Excellent description of everyday life experienced from living within one of the worlds poorest communities.

Magical narrator, tragic sometimes stilted story

The narrator transports you and really brings the story to life. It cannot always rescue the story that feels sometimes fragmented and herky-jerky, although at bottom it is a tragic reflection of reality.

Impressive, powerful!

At times it was hard to keep the many people described straight. It was an incredibly real story of poverty in Mumbai and the paradox of finding strength in powerlessness. An important story to tell!

Looking for hours of depressing content?

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No. As someone who has spent a lot of time in India, I wanted to learn what lay behind the street beggars and scrap sorters I see everywhere. You learn a lot but there is never any high point or climax. It's just depressing note after note. On a 4 hour car ride, the book was just depressing and it went on and on about how terrible this life is.

My God

A brilliant anthropological journey into the lives of a few who represent so many. A truly worth while read.

Tough but necessary

The story is heart breaking but an important one to hear. Hopefully stories like this can bring the spotlight on poverty and corruption not only in India but in other places through out the world.