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)

a periscope into a world that will humble you

What did you love best about Behind the Beautiful Forevers?

This story is real, or very close to real. Descriptions of the lives of people in Annawadi were written in great, believable detail. In one way, the story makes you acknowledge just how much you have and how fortunate you are. In another way, it makes you feel inferior, of the amount of awareness and perseverance that the people in Annawadi have despite corruption, greed, and the weight of the caste system. This is a must read.

Hope

Haunting, yet immersive. This book made me take a closer look at what I consider my “wants” verses “needs”.

Engaging read

Reports on a world few would want to experience yet is gripping and fascinating in its investigation. This is as much a mapping of human nature as a summary of a modern city. Will lend a cogent understanding to the machinations of Indian poverty and city life. Do not miss author's explanation.

Heartbreaking

This story opens some misunderstandings of westerners believing at India as the paradise of Yoguis and spiritual people. The corruption, the exploit of the less favoured by the system, the ingenuity and naivety of poor children, makes feel sick of some human beings. The worst, it happens elsewhere, at many latinamerican countries, it will be no difference. A great book. A pity it is not widely read and translated to other idioms.

Amazing

What was one of the most memorable moments of Behind the Beautiful Forevers?

I loved this book and when I listened to the author's summary of her experience writing the story I was astonished. Her words away from the story have me returning to contemplate situations that were presented to each character and the living situation they had to endure.

Fantastic book

I had to read this book for an Anth class in college. At first I dreaded having to read yet another pretentious, overly scholarly book for school. My opinion quickly changed.
This book puts poverty into prospective for those of us that have never witnessed it first hand. I makes you appreciate what you have, no matter how much you have.

Sad, sadder and sadder still......

Is there anything you would change about this book?

No, the book told a truth that it's difficult for Americans to understand about the way everyday lower caste people in a world class city like Mumbai are forced to live their lives. There are no beautiful forevers there, everything falls apart and no one really gives a rat's ass. I wish I could have seen something other than mans inhumanity to man -

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I doubt that it could have been made enjoyable unless a positive spin were placed on some of the misery the residents of the slum had to endure everyday of their lives. The author wanted to tell it like it was, and it wasn't pleasant.

Have you listened to any of Sunil Malhotra???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't believe I've listened to any other narrations by Sunil Malhotra. He is masterful - He brought the characters to life for me.

Was Behind the Beautiful Forevers worth the listening time?

Yes, it was worth the listening time. I think it told me more than I wanted to know, however.

Life changing

It is so rare that you ever get to read a work of nonfiction journalism so immersive and thorough, and even more rare that it treats a topic so deeply humanistic. This book changed me.

Great book!

I enjoyed this book. With many of the elements and flavor of Shantaram, it was very enjoyable book. That said, Shantaram is ultimately incomparable, and this author could not match the intrigue, adventure, and character depth of Shantaram. Still, a good listen.

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.