Behind the Beautiful Forevers
by Katherine Boo
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NAMED ONE OF TIME'S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE "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 ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The show more 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 reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds--and into the hearts of families impossible to forget. WINNER OF: The PEN Nonfiction Award * The Los Angeles Times Book Prize * The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award * The New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award 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 * Publishers Weekly show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
fountainoverflows A classic story, also set in Mumbai/Bombay, but covering some very similar territory.
70
Stbalbach Another journalistic-novelistic account of lives in Bombay, but more wide ranging across classes and by a native.
20
fountainoverflows Although a children's title, this book follows the story of two boys whose lives revolve around salvaging cardboard and other waste in a Guatemalan dump. When their mother is buried in the refuse, they make a trek north to find their father, supposedly in the Southern U.S. border states. Their lives have a considerable amount in common with the Husain family's.
srdr Engaging stories of how microfinance loans via the internet can change the lives of the working poor worldwide.
wandering_star Both authors have spent a long time with a community of the very poor and have produced sympathetic and very insightful books about how the "underclass" see, and manage their interactions with, the rest of society.
Sandydog1 Same type of "family" memoir written in literary style.
Member Reviews
A hugely readable slice of reportage about 4 years in the Annawadi slum just outside Mumbai airport. Katherine Boo is careful not to patronise her subjects, or to pity them; most of her characters are resourceful, hard working and entirely lacking in self pity. Mostly they expect no help and no justice and they are rarely disappointed. Although conditions are extremely harsh, most Annawadis are aware they could be very much worse. Live in a cramped small hut? You could be on the pavement. Living in a filthy slum? You could be back in your rural village.
As others have mentioned its hard not be moved by the entrepreunerial and resilient spirit of the slum dwellers, and hard not be be profoundly depressed, not so much by the poverty but show more by the relentless grinding corruption at every level of authority. The slum dwellers need to bribe police not to victimise them, doctors to treat them, local fixers to intercede for them at every level of officialdom. And hard not to be incensed at the fate of those who decide suicide, through drinking rat poison, to be a better way out show less
As others have mentioned its hard not be moved by the entrepreunerial and resilient spirit of the slum dwellers, and hard not be be profoundly depressed, not so much by the poverty but show more by the relentless grinding corruption at every level of authority. The slum dwellers need to bribe police not to victimise them, doctors to treat them, local fixers to intercede for them at every level of officialdom. And hard not to be incensed at the fate of those who decide suicide, through drinking rat poison, to be a better way out show less
As I started to read Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I expected a book akin to poverty porn, a literary version of those awful commercials that broadcast photos of downtrodden children on squalid streets whom you can save for only “one dollar a day!” But what I read was both a meticulous character study and a treatise on the livelihoods of an undercity; a protest against all forms of corruption and a captivating, almost seemingly fictitious, legal narrative; a celebration of 21st century free-market capitalism and an indictment of 21st century free-market capitalism.
Thanks to fastidious reporting, Boo presents a sprawling, nearly four year long narrative of what happens to various residents of the Annawadi slum, a slum caught show more between the rapidly developing international airport and luxury hotels of Mumbai. She focuses on several individuals, carefully chipping away their facades to show their inner intricacies and humanize them. While most outsiders to Annawadi would likely look upon these people and think instantly of only one word—poor—Boo shows that this designation is nothing but simplistic caricature. Rather, the people of Annawadi are people who possess sundry personal qualities, one of which happens to be poor. Boo’s understanding of these people is acute; in single paragraphs she exposes the core of a person and introduces inner conflict that could motivate entire epic sagas. The characters—I can’t help but think of them as such, even though they are extant individuals—truly live on the pages; it is impossible to remain detached from their struggles as they sparkle with life under Boo’s deft hand.
Because the characters are so vividly sketched, the main intrigue is overwhelming. In investigating the ultimate origins of poverty and corruption, Boo slowly unfolds the terrible story of the Husains, a Muslim family on the verge of true success that meets terrible tragedy when falsely accused of prompting their neighbor to self-immolate. The story is remarkable and reads like fiction, and its greatest strength is that I had no idea how it would be resolved. Whenever I remembered that the individuals charged with this crime were real—they actually existed and went through this trauma—I flipped the pages faster, eager and anxious for the conclusion, for I knew that any consequences would be absolute.
What I’m left with after finishing Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a multitude of unanswerable questions. Such as: who do we blame for the problems of Annawadi? Who do we blame for the rampant corruption seeping through everything? In one particular instance, a doctor says he’ll lie about a wrongly incarcerated boy’s age in order to allow him to stay in the juvenile jail rather than the much harsher adult jail for the price of two thousand rupees. He explains that doctors receive substandard wages from the government, and accepting bribes is an unfortunate necessity of his job. It’s so easy to denounce the doctor, but honestly, is it right to do so? If everyone is trapped in this hypercompetitive system of making more and more, how can anyone do the moral thing? Everyone is suffering; is someone’s suffering lessened just because people like the residents of Annawadi are suffering more?
Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a story of many things. But mostly, it’s a story of a city, a city that holds so much promise. A promise of a better world. This promise of a better world is not exclusive to Mumbai; it can be extended to every city in every country. But do we delude ourselves in thinking this better world belongs to everyone? show less
Thanks to fastidious reporting, Boo presents a sprawling, nearly four year long narrative of what happens to various residents of the Annawadi slum, a slum caught show more between the rapidly developing international airport and luxury hotels of Mumbai. She focuses on several individuals, carefully chipping away their facades to show their inner intricacies and humanize them. While most outsiders to Annawadi would likely look upon these people and think instantly of only one word—poor—Boo shows that this designation is nothing but simplistic caricature. Rather, the people of Annawadi are people who possess sundry personal qualities, one of which happens to be poor. Boo’s understanding of these people is acute; in single paragraphs she exposes the core of a person and introduces inner conflict that could motivate entire epic sagas. The characters—I can’t help but think of them as such, even though they are extant individuals—truly live on the pages; it is impossible to remain detached from their struggles as they sparkle with life under Boo’s deft hand.
Because the characters are so vividly sketched, the main intrigue is overwhelming. In investigating the ultimate origins of poverty and corruption, Boo slowly unfolds the terrible story of the Husains, a Muslim family on the verge of true success that meets terrible tragedy when falsely accused of prompting their neighbor to self-immolate. The story is remarkable and reads like fiction, and its greatest strength is that I had no idea how it would be resolved. Whenever I remembered that the individuals charged with this crime were real—they actually existed and went through this trauma—I flipped the pages faster, eager and anxious for the conclusion, for I knew that any consequences would be absolute.
What I’m left with after finishing Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a multitude of unanswerable questions. Such as: who do we blame for the problems of Annawadi? Who do we blame for the rampant corruption seeping through everything? In one particular instance, a doctor says he’ll lie about a wrongly incarcerated boy’s age in order to allow him to stay in the juvenile jail rather than the much harsher adult jail for the price of two thousand rupees. He explains that doctors receive substandard wages from the government, and accepting bribes is an unfortunate necessity of his job. It’s so easy to denounce the doctor, but honestly, is it right to do so? If everyone is trapped in this hypercompetitive system of making more and more, how can anyone do the moral thing? Everyone is suffering; is someone’s suffering lessened just because people like the residents of Annawadi are suffering more?
Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a story of many things. But mostly, it’s a story of a city, a city that holds so much promise. A promise of a better world. This promise of a better world is not exclusive to Mumbai; it can be extended to every city in every country. But do we delude ourselves in thinking this better world belongs to everyone? show less
Stunning, honest, inspiring, heartbreaking. I read a few comments that complained that this was too upsetting. This is not a novel people! It is sad because the escalating wealth of the few in India has made life completely untenable for the majority of India's urban dwellers. These are people who were already living a life too horrible for most of us to get our brains around. Also, this story should have some resonance for Americans (on a far less horrifying scale) as the divide between rich and poor widens.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Mumbai, and I have never felt the love of place that seems to engulf many others. Though I am more often repelled than enamored by the city, I am endlessly and undeniably fascinated. I have read show more a lot over the years trying to understand urban India better, and this is the single best non-fiction book on India I have read. A must read. show less
I have spent quite a bit of time in Mumbai, and I have never felt the love of place that seems to engulf many others. Though I am more often repelled than enamored by the city, I am endlessly and undeniably fascinated. I have read show more a lot over the years trying to understand urban India better, and this is the single best non-fiction book on India I have read. A must read. show less
I almost didn't read this book because I interpreted the description 'narrative non-fiction' to mean 'historical fiction' -- a fictionalized account of a historical period or incident. This was a totally wrong assumption and had I not stumbled upon the Author's Note at the BACK of the book (I think it should have been the Forward) that explained that everything--every person, every incident, every fact-- in the book was true and researched, recorded and filmed over many years, I would have re-shelved this excellent account of life in Mumbai's slums because from the first sentence, it read like red-hot page-turning fiction: "Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul show more and his father."
Katherine Boo was a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post, which should have tipped me off. Her writing won her a Pulitzer Price, a MacArthur 'Genius' grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
Many of us will have passed by the Mumbai slum by the international airport dozens of times, or heard stories and read newspaper articles of the corruption of the Mumbai police and judicial system, or may even know first-hand how functionless India is unless one knows how to operate in its web of corruption and pay-offs, but this true account of a handful of protagonists, their lives, dreams, successes, failures and deaths, captures all these strands into one. How the terrorist attack enacted at the Taj and Oberoi affected India's tourism industry that left children starving in its slums, to how well-meaning non-profit organisations feed the greed of those who know how to work the system...this is a book that has rightly been called 'the best book yet written on contemporary India'. show less
Katherine Boo was a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post, which should have tipped me off. Her writing won her a Pulitzer Price, a MacArthur 'Genius' grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
Many of us will have passed by the Mumbai slum by the international airport dozens of times, or heard stories and read newspaper articles of the corruption of the Mumbai police and judicial system, or may even know first-hand how functionless India is unless one knows how to operate in its web of corruption and pay-offs, but this true account of a handful of protagonists, their lives, dreams, successes, failures and deaths, captures all these strands into one. How the terrorist attack enacted at the Taj and Oberoi affected India's tourism industry that left children starving in its slums, to how well-meaning non-profit organisations feed the greed of those who know how to work the system...this is a book that has rightly been called 'the best book yet written on contemporary India'. show less
In Annawandi, a congested, polluted slum of India's largest city, Mumbai, 17 year old Abdul sorts through garbage for recyclable materials to resell. His meager earnings are enough to at least protect his family from the homeless poverty of many who live around them. This book of narrative non-fiction is brilliantly written and shatters any illusions we may have about opportunity, justice, and moral decency.
A carefully researched, insightful, and, yes, beautiful book about life in an Indian slum. Not an easy read, especially since I live about fifteen minutes walk from a shantytown, which, like the one that the author describes here, is located just down the road from some extremely expensive and prestigious real estate.
"Behind the Beautiful Forevers" made me think of "Random Family, Adrianne LaFrance's much-read narrative nonfiction classic. Beyond the obvious parallels between these two works, there's the frankly astonishing fact that either of these two books even got written. Boo, a white American woman, spoke no indigenous Indian languages when she started work on "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" and had to rely on Indian interlocutors show more to get to know her subjects. They are profusely thanked in the book's appendix, and Boo seems quite aware of the amount of patience and trust they showed her. The same might be said of the slum that she studies: it couldn't always have been easy for the people that the author profiles here to put up with her presence. Still, Boo is able to illustrate their clearly subhuman living conditions that are present in the slum, which comes off at times like a cross between a prison and an environmental disaster zone — while not forgetting to make her subjects into autonomous beings, not objects of pity.
People who live comfortably in dramatically unequal societies react to their situation in unpredictable ways. Some adopt the posture that the poor deserve or desire their fates, others avoid thinking about them entirely. Some go through an activist phase, usually short-lived. In a sense, one of the most remarkable aspects about "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is how even-handed it is. The author takes care to the almost impossible choices and almost unbearable suffering the people who live there face, but her book often focuses on survival. There are people in "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" that collect, appraise, and sell recyclables, teach, bargain, and, most of all, get by. Not all of them are lovable, it's true, and some of them — power brokers, thieves, addicts — don't always come off well. But Boo's mind seems to have been open enough when she started writing this one to not force the people she writes about into pigeon-holes, and I know from personal experience that that can be hard. Boo seems to have stuck with her subjects long enough to see their lives develop for better or worse: by the time the book ends, the place has been paved over completely.
Last of all, I was surprised, and perhaps pleased, at how narrow the author kept the scope of "Behind the Beautiful Forevers." Jeremiads against global capitalism are not rare; they're a dime a dozen down at your local hippie bookstore. But Boo's perspective here is more anthropological than economic or political. She briefly discusses India's push to compete globally and how this has affected the shantytown that she's studying, but, in a sense, she doesn't even need to do that: the place is quite literally hedged in by multiple luxury hotels that were built to cater to an international clientele. Boo's focus doesn't wander too far from the human: what she has done in her book is not just to complain about the injustices of global capitalism but to preserve real human experience that has been shaped by global forces. There are places like the one Boo describes in so many countries, and you could even argue their analogs are hidden in so many first-world nations. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is one of those books that everyone not currently living in a place like the one that Boo describes should read. show less
"Behind the Beautiful Forevers" made me think of "Random Family, Adrianne LaFrance's much-read narrative nonfiction classic. Beyond the obvious parallels between these two works, there's the frankly astonishing fact that either of these two books even got written. Boo, a white American woman, spoke no indigenous Indian languages when she started work on "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" and had to rely on Indian interlocutors show more to get to know her subjects. They are profusely thanked in the book's appendix, and Boo seems quite aware of the amount of patience and trust they showed her. The same might be said of the slum that she studies: it couldn't always have been easy for the people that the author profiles here to put up with her presence. Still, Boo is able to illustrate their clearly subhuman living conditions that are present in the slum, which comes off at times like a cross between a prison and an environmental disaster zone — while not forgetting to make her subjects into autonomous beings, not objects of pity.
People who live comfortably in dramatically unequal societies react to their situation in unpredictable ways. Some adopt the posture that the poor deserve or desire their fates, others avoid thinking about them entirely. Some go through an activist phase, usually short-lived. In a sense, one of the most remarkable aspects about "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is how even-handed it is. The author takes care to the almost impossible choices and almost unbearable suffering the people who live there face, but her book often focuses on survival. There are people in "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" that collect, appraise, and sell recyclables, teach, bargain, and, most of all, get by. Not all of them are lovable, it's true, and some of them — power brokers, thieves, addicts — don't always come off well. But Boo's mind seems to have been open enough when she started writing this one to not force the people she writes about into pigeon-holes, and I know from personal experience that that can be hard. Boo seems to have stuck with her subjects long enough to see their lives develop for better or worse: by the time the book ends, the place has been paved over completely.
Last of all, I was surprised, and perhaps pleased, at how narrow the author kept the scope of "Behind the Beautiful Forevers." Jeremiads against global capitalism are not rare; they're a dime a dozen down at your local hippie bookstore. But Boo's perspective here is more anthropological than economic or political. She briefly discusses India's push to compete globally and how this has affected the shantytown that she's studying, but, in a sense, she doesn't even need to do that: the place is quite literally hedged in by multiple luxury hotels that were built to cater to an international clientele. Boo's focus doesn't wander too far from the human: what she has done in her book is not just to complain about the injustices of global capitalism but to preserve real human experience that has been shaped by global forces. There are places like the one Boo describes in so many countries, and you could even argue their analogs are hidden in so many first-world nations. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is one of those books that everyone not currently living in a place like the one that Boo describes should read. show less
Rating: four horrfied, repulsed, politically appalled stars of five
The Book Report: I'll keep this short. Boo set out to tell the cost that average Indians are paying for the rapid rise through the capitalist ranks that their country has embarked on. She chose as her lens the small tragedy (in the cosmic scheme of things) of a death and subsequent court case surrounding the death in Mumbai's slum called Annawadi.
Really and truly, this is all one needs to know; names, places, details aren't going to make this any easier to pre-process. One is best advised to enter into this book with little information about the events chronicled. It simply cannot be fathomed by those of us with thirty dollars to spend on a book, with access to a free show more public library, with an education sufficient to read the text, with lives so easy that we possess time to pass, as opposed to needs to meet, what this story will reveal. I will not steal Boo's thunder with a fuller report.
My Review: I hate this woman's writing. It feels so chilly and so removed from the subject that I can't believe how much praise this aspect of the text has received. It's the kind of gawdawful New Journalism crapola...get in the middle of the story, get all the juice and dirt, and then spew it back at a faux-objective remove...that I associate with Norman Mailer's terrible Executioner's Song, of unlamented memory.
The story is this generation's 12 Million Black Voices. It deserves so much more than it got from its author. It is, quite simply, necessary reading for free marketeers and libertarians and their misguided, often foolishly optimistic, ilk.
THIS IS WHAT REALLY HAPPENS IN YOUR TERRIBLE, UNFORGIVING, “COMMUNITY STANDARDS” WORLD. Read it. Recognize yourselves in the unseen overclass. Your tax-o-phobic refusal to recognize your duty to your fellow human beings leads directly to this world, its injustices and cruelties, its inhumane and indifferent treatment of the innocent-of-any-crime hoi polloi.
If you don't feel deep and humiliating PERSONAL shame after reading Boo's awful story, I fear you are a sociopath. show less
The Book Report: I'll keep this short. Boo set out to tell the cost that average Indians are paying for the rapid rise through the capitalist ranks that their country has embarked on. She chose as her lens the small tragedy (in the cosmic scheme of things) of a death and subsequent court case surrounding the death in Mumbai's slum called Annawadi.
Really and truly, this is all one needs to know; names, places, details aren't going to make this any easier to pre-process. One is best advised to enter into this book with little information about the events chronicled. It simply cannot be fathomed by those of us with thirty dollars to spend on a book, with access to a free show more public library, with an education sufficient to read the text, with lives so easy that we possess time to pass, as opposed to needs to meet, what this story will reveal. I will not steal Boo's thunder with a fuller report.
My Review: I hate this woman's writing. It feels so chilly and so removed from the subject that I can't believe how much praise this aspect of the text has received. It's the kind of gawdawful New Journalism crapola...get in the middle of the story, get all the juice and dirt, and then spew it back at a faux-objective remove...that I associate with Norman Mailer's terrible Executioner's Song, of unlamented memory.
The story is this generation's 12 Million Black Voices. It deserves so much more than it got from its author. It is, quite simply, necessary reading for free marketeers and libertarians and their misguided, often foolishly optimistic, ilk.
THIS IS WHAT REALLY HAPPENS IN YOUR TERRIBLE, UNFORGIVING, “COMMUNITY STANDARDS” WORLD. Read it. Recognize yourselves in the unseen overclass. Your tax-o-phobic refusal to recognize your duty to your fellow human beings leads directly to this world, its injustices and cruelties, its inhumane and indifferent treatment of the innocent-of-any-crime hoi polloi.
If you don't feel deep and humiliating PERSONAL shame after reading Boo's awful story, I fear you are a sociopath. show less
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Next I devoured Boo’s book, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” which extended her probing and compassionate portrayal of poverty to India. Before becoming a journalist, I had spent nearly two years working with grass-roots groups in Mumbai slums just like Annawadi, the one she spent three years chronicling for the book. I’d been so upset by show more journalistic portrayals of these neighborhoods that I wrote an entire master’s thesis about the subject. Now, finally, here was an account that took slum residents seriously as protagonists in their own lives, without dismissing the inequality and corruption that stymied them. show less
Boo, in letting go of her story, in dwelling with it relatively briefly in her book's 250 pages (in contrast to the years she spent with the slum-dwellers), allows it to resonate with us as a small classic of contemporary writing.
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo -- Nov 2011 LTER in Reviews of Early Reviewers Books (January 2012)
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Katherine Boo was born on August 12, 1964 and grew up in the Washington D. C. area. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting from disadvantaged communities has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur show more "Genius" Grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. Her first book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction (2012), as well as nonfiction prizes from PEN, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the New York Public Library, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers
- Alternate titles
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
- Original publication date
- 2012-02-07
- People/Characters
- Abdul; Asha; Zehrunisa Husain; Fatima; Manju; Karam (show all 20); Kehkashan; Mirchi; Rahul; Mahadeo; Finnegan Courtney; Sunil; Sunita; Meena; Kalua; Sonu; Sanjay; Subhash Sawant; Mr. Kamble; Sister Paulette
- Important places
- Mumbai, India; Annawadi, Mumbai, India
- Dedication
- For two Sunils
and what they've taught me about not giving up - First words
- [Prologue] Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul and his father.
Let it keep, the moment when Officer Fish Lips met Abdul in the police station.
[Author's Note] Ten years ago, I fell in love with an Indian man adn gained a country. - Quotations
- “Instead, powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked. Sometimes they tried to destroy one another. Sometimes, like Fatima, they destroyed themselves in the process.”
She was damaged, and acknowledged it freely. She was illiterate--acknowledged that, too. But when others spoke of her fury as an ignorant, animal thing, that was bukwaas, utter nonsense. Much of her outrage derived fro... (show all)m a belated recognition that she was as human as anyone else.
. . . He still found it strange to think of her as dead, because at Annawadi he hadn't considered her fully alive. Like many of his neighbors, he had assessed her damage, physical and emotional, and casually assigned her to a... (show all) lesser plane of existence. . . .
In the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, "corruption", had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India's modern, global ambitions. But for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a g... (show all)reat deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)[Prologue] His lips, under the mustache, were fat and fishlike, and Abdul would remember them later--the way they parted a little before he smiled.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)But for now, eleven cans, seven empty water bottles and a wad of aluminum foil rested on a long spit of concrete, awaiting the first child with the courage to claim them.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)[Author's Note] If the house is crooked and crumbling, and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight? - Blurbers
- LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole; Ehrenreich, Barbara; Kidder, Tracy; Sedaris, David; Sen, Amartya; Guha, Ramachandra (show all 8); Mishra, Pankaj; Remnick, David
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 305.5690954792
- Canonical LCC
- HV4140.M86
Classifications
- Genres
- General Nonfiction, Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.5690954792 — Social sciences Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Groups of people People by social and economic levels Lower, alienated, excluded classes Poor people History, geographic treatment, biography
- LCC
- HV4140 .M86 — Social sciences Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Protection, assistance and relief Poor in cities. Slums
- BISAC
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- 5,005
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- 2,760
- Reviews
- 307
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- 14 — Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 47
- ASINs
- 18
