Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
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Narrated by:
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Sunil Malhotra
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By:
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Katherine Boo
About this listen
National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2012
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 "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, 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 15-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and 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.
©2012 Katherine Boo (P)2013 Bolinda Publishing Pty LtdListeners also enjoyed...
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What listeners say about Behind the Beautiful Forevers
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Mr Neil T Foley
- 10-04-23
Unforgettable
A brilliant book which i found to be deeply distrubing and shocking too, making us here in the west look and sound so complacent and priviliged, compared to the poor souls who simply by virtue of birth face daily struggles and impossible choices just to survive. It will stay with me a very long time.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 14-11-21
Life changing account of unimaginable lives lived in poverty in India
Read / listen to this!
Written as a novel, yet a true life account of lives lived in a slum next to the affluence of the airport. It makes you feel the stifling straight jacket of being born into that life, the inevitability of grinding poverty with no escape. Yet there is humour and humanity in its pages.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mattw8
- 04-09-19
brilliant
well researched and written account of life in a Mumbai slum very rare to see such reporting about this subject. quite brilliant
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Louis Hall
- 13-04-17
Great book, with interesting twist at the end.
What made the experience of listening to Behind the Beautiful Forevers the most enjoyable?
Characters overcoming, and succumbing to adversity. In a hard, but colorful world.
What other book might you compare Behind the Beautiful Forevers to, and why?
Last man in tower by Aravind Adiga. It is also set in India, and deals with human interactions, and the how relationships are distorted by money, greed, and jealousy.
Any additional comments?
This book is very well written. I could see, smell, and taste the slums. I felt like I knew the inhabitants personally by the end.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- T
- 21-10-14
Vibrant tale of life in a Mumbai shanty slum
What an unexpected delight! “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” is a tale of life in a slum shanty under the flight-path at Mumbai airport, a work of fiction but grounded in carefully researched real lives, such that it won a prize for non-fiction. I heard of it when I booked to see the play David Hare has written from the book, soon to be performed at the National Theatre.
The action takes place in a shanty originally started by Tamil workers brought to Mumbai as cheap construction workers for the burgeoning Mumbai airport. The desperate poverty is regarded as demeaning India’s image to the businesspeople flying into its financial capital, so it’s entrance is hidden behind a large hoarding, advertising ceramic tiles that will “stay beautiful forever.” The optimism and entrepreneurial spirit of the people wrestles with powerful currents of change – tensions between Moslem and Hindu, the continuing legacies of the caste system and of the British Raj, the effects of boom and bust. And even terrorism. The residents are under constant threat of eviction from their illegal slums, from violence and robbery from other slum-dwellers and from the corruption of politicians, police and the legal system. But their optimism still shines through, so the book is not just an education, but unexpectedly uplifting. Thoroughly recommended.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Mr David Blenkey
- 05-12-23
Narrative non-fiction at its finest
The result of years of painstaking journalistic research, this book reads like a beautifully written novel with vivid descriptions and character portrayals. Excellent, emotive narration too 👌
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