Behind the beautiful forevers
Subtitle: life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
By: Katherine Boo
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781400067558; 9780679645504
Subjects: Urban poor
Description: This work of narrative nonfiction tells 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 it, based on three years of reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. The events recounted are real, as are all the names. 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. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter, Annawadi's "most-everything girl," will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to good times they call "the full enjoy." But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.
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: A hole she called a window; title: A come-apart; title: The master; title: Market city; title: Marquee effect; title: Parrots, caught and sold; title: Proper sleep; title: Up and out; title: Nine nights of dance; title: Something shining á; title: The trial; title: Ice; title: Black and white; title: A school, a hospital, a cricket field.