Behind the beautiful forevers
Subtitle: life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
By: Katherine Boo
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Brunswick, Vic
Language: eng
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781921844638
Subjects: Urban poor; Poor; Slums; Biography; Social life and customs; Creative nonfiction; Pauvres en milieu urbain; Pauvres; Manners and customs
Description: The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. 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 fortune in the recyclable garbage of richer people. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a rural childhood, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to good times. But then, as the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed.
Table of contents: title: Prologue: Between roses; title: Undercitizens; title: Annawadi; title: Asha; title: Sunil; title: Manju; title: The business of burning; title: Ghost house; title: The hole she called a window; title: The come-apart; title: The master; title: A little wildness; title: Marquee effect; title: Parrots, caught and sold; title: Proper sleep; title: Up and out; title: Nine nights of dance; title: Something shining; title: The trial; title: Ice; title: Black and white; title: A school, a hospital, a cricket field; title: Authors Note; title: Acknowledgements.