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)

Well done

Ambitious themes, and subject matter presented in an accessible and tangible way. I agree with the author that Western readers do not have enough access to thoughtful articulation of the themes in this book. Very thoughtfully done.

A masterpiece of a book and an exquisite reading

What made the experience of listening to Behind the Beautiful Forevers the most enjoyable?

The transporting sense that you are there, in Annawadi, seeing the characters and their stories unfold -- thanks to the absolutely stunning research, magnificent writing and the gentle but commanding voice of the reader.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The opportunity to understand life at its most desperate through the eyes of the people living it, and to discover their humanity, intelligence, drive and even the wit (in some cases, particularly the wit) that carry them through the awful trials of the undercity.

Any additional comments?

This was my first Audible book. I hadn't listened to a book on tape or on CD--ever. I bought this one because I had purchased the hardback book, and had read about a third of it and couldn't bear to stop. I had a 4-hour drive coming up and it occurred to me that I could continue

Interesting, but lacks a plots. Narrator did a great job

Although it was interesting, I found the book to be without a mic of a plot. Didn't keep me intrigued. The narrator did an excellent job.

Sad, depressing and yet hopeful

What did you love best about Behind the Beautiful Forevers?

The characters in the book.I'm from India and I was fortunate to have effectively won the "birth lottery". But poverty is all around and just like in the US, there is a tendency of the well off to blame the poor for being poor. The poor are an inconvenience, a blight, a sorry spectacle that mars the vision of a more prosperous India. Books like these humanize them and but for the circumstances of their existence, they are like anyone else with hopes, aspirations, fears, vices, etc. I think the author did an excellent job of describing their lives without judgement or melodrama. This book isn't entertainment, or "poverty porn" along the lines of The Slumdog Millionaire. It is very hard to listen to and very hard to hold back tears as we learn about how hard the characters struggle to get by and get stymied by the very people who are supposed to help them. It made me very angry and very sad. And yet, the fact that the fire of aspiration continues to burn bright and the desire to break free remains supreme fills you with hope for the characters and the country at large.

Fascinating Book

This is a hard book to read... but an important one. it's so easy to forget how tragic are lives elsewhere compared to our own. The authors words at the end of the book are insightful and help to give further understanding.

one of the most incredible books I've ever red

I thought this was a fiction until the afterword. Holy moly! reads like a novel. this book made me laugh, cry, and so much more

No holds barred. A beautiful view of the terrible.

What first comes to mind is the excellent narrator. His voice seems so integral to the book, at this point (having heard it all) it's impossible to imagine the story without him. He adopts the prevailing accents, and individual voices of the Mumbai slum in which the lives of the various people in the book are trapped. Normally I dislike adopted accents in audio books so much I will return the book without finishing it. Thinking, "what a shame, a potentially good book ruined by a bad, hammy narrator." However, in this case the accent seems to be one well known, or native to the narrator. The cadences and speech patterns of the people in the story are not those of a native English speaker, and the words themselves would lose much of their flavor without the accent and speech patterns with which they were originally spoken. Conveyed as though by direct audio/video telephone line from the original characters, through the talented story telling voice of the Narrator. So this time (almost uniquely in my experience with audio books) I like the accents, (the author's) the storyteller's accented speech, brought vividly to life by the Narrator, because the accentation seems not only genuine, but integral to the speech of the characters, and indispensable to the entire work. The narration which flawlessly "becomes" the voices of the characters, is superb, excellent, essential. And on this last note, I mean about my use of the word "characters", upon listening to the authors note, (self spoken) I learned that she had followed these people whom she's portrayed in the book, followed them around, lived in their shadows in real life! These people actually exist, are even called by their own names as named in the book. The story seems so fluid and is so dramatic I'd assumed this was without question a "novelized" version of life in the Mumbai slums. Surely the conversations between multiple people must be a work of fiction. But in fact, according to the author, she followed these very real people around for a year, was with them when the events recorded happened, saw these things unfold in real time. And she recorded them verbatim, meaning wrote down every conversation appearing in the book. I "do" believe her, but the book flows so beautifully, it seems while reading it, while experiencing it, it could only be a 'novel' of great accomplishment, beauty and stature. And yet it is, it would seem, all, every word of it true! No wonder this author won the Pulitzer prize, though I'm not clear that it was for 'this' book. In any case she is of 'that' caliber as a writer of great talent and skill. I believe I will remember the people of the Mumbai slums, (as people I've actually met, and actually come to be familiar with), I will stop and wonder, how is Abdul doing? Did he ever get his iPod? What about Zarunisa? Did her quest to get Calu to better himself and stop stealing ever pay off? Oh, my god! I'm brought up short as I remember, Calu died. But how could that have happened? As I feel very real shock at the news of Calu's passing, life goes on in Mumbai, in it's pitiless slums. And i begin to go about my business as do the people who knew him. Life has to go on, I guess, or it just simply does, as we all eventually learn, sadder but wiser. I feel that for many years, and likely for the rest of my life, I will continue occasionally remembering, and wondering, "is 'so-and-so' still alive? What is she doing now? It will be as if I had been there, and seen these events, and walked with the people whose lot in life it was to live them out. Inexplicably, physically, or mentally somehow I traveled there to Mumbai, for a few weeks, or months of real time, and witnessed these sometimes terrible truths for myself. These events and people, they are alive in the words of this book, captured forever like small creatures in amber. A trick not easily pulled off. And in fact, they are alive in this, our, the world's actual physical reality, somewhere on the other side of the horizon, of the sphere of this planet. They have continued on living, moving on along the timeline from the place where I last knew them, their last known location. Where they once lived out their lives within the covers of this book.

Beautifully written a must read!!! I loved it.

Beautifully written, this book evokes memories of the in equality and the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty I experienced growing up as a black man in the ghettos of Brownsville East NY. The book illuminates that fact that poverty and insuffiency proliferates ingenuity. We might be worlds apart but the commonalities are undeniable between the slum life of Brooklyn and Mumbai!

fantastic journalism, ok storytelling

I really admire the depth to which Katherine Boo was able to watch and understand life in a Mumbai slum. in my opinion this could have been a much better book if the story was presented differently. throughout much of the book, the author describes things - events as they unfold, traits of the characters and even the emotions of the characters. the book could have been better if there were more conversations between the characters, with the onus being on the reader to grasp the details.

A Masterpiece

This audiobook offers an extraordinary reading experience!

The images, characters and language of a slum in Mumbai are brilliantly captured by a journalist at the top of her game.

The actor's facility with accents and language and different voices clarified the listening experience and actually enhanced a great book.

This story offers an entirely new perspective to someone who is unfamiliar with India, or desperate, soul killing poverty for that matter. It is terribly sad on one level, but written and read with so much life and power it becomes electrifying, as compelling as a novel.