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)

Crushingly sad and pessimistic

Boo is a Pulitzer prize winner and I’ve had pretty luck with them (Ava’s Man, The Bridge at San Luis Rey.) She shows us the daily lives of the residents of Anawadi, a slum hard by glitzy Mumbai International Airport and a sewage lake.

This tale is relentlessly grim. The characters live in degradation which the poorest resident of the USA would find intolerable (the sewage lake being the prime example). Several of the residents are enterprising and amazingly hard-working. Abdul, a young Muslim trash dealer and sometime protag, spends endless hours at the soul-crushingly tedious work of sorting garbage for resale to recyclers. He is incarcerated and beaten for a killing that the authorities know was a suicide. Every person of authority who becomes involved in the case, be it doctor, coroner, police officer or other, is motivated solely by the desire to extract the maximum bribe possible from the family. This is far from the only tragedy/travesty of the book.

The story is told by an omniscient narrator as in fiction. How was the reporting done? Was Boo really listening to every conversation she relates? Her tale is fascinating and reading quite competent. Finally, though, I couldn’t take any more. In the last year or so I’ve visited the U.S. Great Depression (A Secret Gift), famine in China (The Good Earth), and general misery in North Korea (Nothing to Envy). In the U.S. the misery was lightened by generosity and shared suffering; in China by shared suffering, initiative and the passage of time; and in North Korea maybe not at all. In Forevers the poverty is bad enough but it floats in a sewage lake of brutality and corruption. I may just have hit poverty fatigue. I bailed about 2/3 of the way through.

The best

This was a heartbreaking and eye opening narrative of Mumbai slums. Having just visited there, I found it riveting.

An Antidote for Shantaram

Katherine Boo's book is a good antidote for Gregory David Roberts' Shantaran. Whereas Shantaram appears to view its Mumbai slum through some type of fantasy haze that is ultimately used to glorify its author, Boo's Mumbai slum is stark, unadorned, and filled with people who are barely surviving (or in many cases, not surviving). At times, I felt like a car driver who has been mesmerized by an accident on the side of the road - at other times I simply felt sad and wondered what drew me to this story. For me, this book represents another important facet of India - the conflict between Hindus and Muslims, poverty, corruption, and misery - that needs to be appreciated along with all of the other literary efforts to portray India. Although this is a grim story, it also highlights the grit, ingenuity, and perseverance of people who live on the edge.

Very depressing and disappointing

I'm probably going against the swelling tide of accolades for this book but I was somewhat disappointed. Although the writing was excellent, the book began to drag in the second half. The characters were well drawn and, considering it is a non-fiction book, were very compelling. The problem for me is the subject matter. How much pain about the reality of the human poverty condition can anyone take? The fact that the main characters had drawn the deuce of diamonds in the genetic lottery was so clearly drawn and portrayed by the author that it began to grate on my patience. It would be like reading a book about sado-masochism; how many stories do I have to read before I get the point that some people are mean and horrible. Although I appreciate what Katherine Boo has done, has she really revealed anything that I didn't know before? Life is unfair. Corruption is everywhere. There is no hope for a better life for 80% of the world. The book really just confirmed what I already knew: people can adapt to any condition, even filthy, disgusting places like Indian slums. Did it really require three years of intensive research, 3,000 documents and thousands of interviews to discover that life is really dreadful for the poor? I appreciate that she didn't make up the stories and actually followed several of the characters from beginning to end but these stories could have just as easily occurred in the slums of Mexico City or Zimbabwe. I guess the contrast of this slum right up against the richness of the hotels was meant to emphasize the poverty. To be truthful, I thought "The White Tiger" was head and shoulders above this book for revealing the heart and soul of the Indian personality. In that book, the author, although in a humorous, cynical method, demonstrates why the average or impoverished Indian is stuck in his or her position in life. One of the best concepts that I don't believe Mrs. Boo intended was the repudiation of the "Trickle down" theory of economics. As India gets richer, it is only the top 1% who benefit. The rest of the Country still only gets water twice a day. (For those interested, read "The Big Thirst" to see how backward one of the "richest" countries of the world is. The best part of the book was a renewed appreciation for how wonderful my life is and how lucky I am to live in the United States with all its problems.

Incredible story telling

What did you love best about Behind the Beautiful Forevers?

It takes you to another country. You feel as if you know the characters.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The slum dwellers really become persons of interest to you. They are three-dimensional human beings you care about. And when they suffer, you actually feel for them. The author is quite exceptional in transporting her readers to Mumbai in the 1990s.

What about Sunil Malhotra’s performance did you like?

No difficulty with names, places, etc.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Micro-economies and the price of global capitalism in the developing world.

Any additional comments?

No, I recommend the audiobook to all my friends. I have not actually read the book but heard about it from a friend. Then, I listened to it, and I was really captivated. It's marvelous!

Heartbreaking

Loved the delicate interweaving of many lives over many years. Accounts of cruelty, corruption, violence, despair were soul-crushing. Certainly puts all my first world problems in perspective. The fact that these were true accounts were even more crushing. Beautiful worthwhile undertaking

yes!

used this Audio to help me finish up my sociology class helped thankyou very much!

Quite an eye opening experience

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

Involving myself in each of the family's worlds and exploring it from their point of view.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The incredible struggles and surprises each character is involved in.

Which character – as performed by Sunil Malhotra – was your favorite?

Asha was a unique character that was foreign in her actions to me, so her choices surprised me every time.

If you could give Behind the Beautiful Forevers a new subtitle, what would it be?

Hope in desperation

Any additional comments?

It would be an incredible fictional story, and the fact that it's non-fiction blows my mind.

I also loved how Katherine Boo discussed the book afterwards.

expected a little more

What did you like best about Behind the Beautiful Forevers? What did you like least?

The stories were real, and factual, I believe. Liked the least.... the presentation.

Has Behind the Beautiful Forevers turned you off from other books in this genre?

No.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The dull, flat monotone was a distraction that even the wonderful tales and brilliant descriptions could not overcome. This would have been a better book to read, rather than listen to, only because the narrator, although he was without flaws in his reading, could not impart any drama or emotion. I feel the author might have done better had she narrated the book herself. She lived it, she should of told it.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

It is a great day by day account of life in the slum, but there was little chance for the listener to get emotionally attached to the characters. I found myself falling asleep and not knowing where I left off many times. Great content but rather boring, and without some major re-writes is not movie potential. Out of respect for the author I would go see it, but I would suspect it would be vastly different as a screen play.

Any additional comments?

Thank you to the author for her strong commitment to fact and realism.

Fabulous Read

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. I enjoyed this book tremendously. It is a fascinating bird's eye view into a world most of us will never see. I loved the narrator's voice and the voices he used for each of the various characters. The author is so gifted and her characterizations of each person are so tenderly drawn and engaging. I couldn't put the book down. If you liked the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, I think you will love this story too.