Behind the Beautiful Forevers: A Journey Into the Lives of Mumbai's Undercity Residents

Amazon Customer: <b>Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity</b> was a simply wonderful work of narrative non fiction and I am not the least bit surprised it won numerous awards. Author Katherine Boo is a Pulitzer Prize winner and it was evident she knew this topic intimately. Her Author's Note explains the amount of research undertaken in writing this book. Over the course of several years, from 2007 through until 2011, Katherine Boo (with the assistance of various translators) worked tirelessly gathering information in an effort to understand what it was to live in the Annawadi slums. She gathered photo's, audio and videotape footage, interviewed residents, obtained official records, listened and observed. In so doing she was able to capture the people of the slums incredibly well. Almost every sentence contained a nugget of information that pulled me up short causing me to mull over the meaning and to wonder at how these people survived their lives.

Of course, as per the title, very many did not survive.

As I was reading I struggled to reconcile the lives of these Indian slum dwellers against the lives of the Indian people I've worked...

Australia on Apr 01, 2021

Sujeet Kumar: This is a non-fiction book which places urban poor in the present development discourse. Reading this book not only helps you to come across many realities but also gives you an idea of sound methodology and broadening your paradigm.

This is an easy read book. I strongly recommend it for researchers as well as common readers.

The book narrates the coping strategy of slum dwellers for sustaining their life. The narration is strong and sometimes you are swayed with the author's word, and can make you cry and angry too.

Happy reading! My best!

India on Sep 07, 2018

Lori: This novel is well researched and written to provide an insightful glimpse into the world of the very poor surviving in India. Wrapped in hope, a thread likely to snap, the characters are resilient in their dreams to survive poverty. Based upon a real slum and real people, this author provides a heartbreaking tale of an Indian slum, and sheds light on the endless surrounding corruption of the country that drives the residents up and down as the economy and politics affect their lives.

Canada on Jun 23, 2017

npiero45: Buon libro. Nell'ultimo capitolo l'autrice descrive il lavoro che ha fatto negli slum di Mumbay, le storie che racconta sono di personaggi veri coi loro nomi, un impegno durato più di tre anni a intervistare, confrontare, esaminare documenti, vivere la realtà indiana. Le sue esperienze precedenti erano trai i poveri e gli emarginati di Washington e New York, poi il matrimonio con un indiano l'ha portata a voler vivere la realtà delle shanty town dell'India.
Si legge con partecipazione ma senza il coinvolgimento traditore degli scrittori alla De Amicis; l'autrice suscita e mantiene vivo l'interesse a seguire la vita di questi gruppi di famiglie, persone, ragazzini, indù e mussulmani, senza bisogno di emozioni empatiche e commozioni indotte da immagini e parole di commiserazione e dolore.
Per chi si appresti a recarsi in India è un must assoluto, ti apre alla conoscenza della realtà del Paese, politica, giudiziaria, sociale, religiosa e non per questo è una guida turistica. Non vi farà piangere, ma vi consentirà di conoscere.

Italy on Jan 05, 2014

Michael J. Connelly: In the 1950s, the comedian Eddie Lawrence invented the Old Philosopher, a character who recited imagined calamities and asked, “Is that what’s bothering you, Bunkie?” As I read about the misfortunes chronicled in "Behind the Beautiful Forevers," I found myself thinking, Is that what’s bothering you, Pallavi? Except these calamities are all too real.

Katherine Boo writes very well. Her reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and she’s won a MacArthur “Genius” grant. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is her anthropological-by-anecdote study of Annawadi, an “undercity” – a temporary colony in makeshift shelters – of 3,000 squatters under the flight path of the Mumbai airport. It sits in the shadows of the “Glimmerglass Hyatt” and other luxury hotels, symbols of India’s newfound prosperity.

As Boo explains in an author’s note, "Every country has its myths, and one that successful Indians liked to indulge was a romance of instability and adaptation – the idea that India's rapid rise derived in part from the chaotic unpredictability of daily life." And nowhere is daily life more chaotic or...

United States on Nov 30, 2013

Mme Dorothee King: Based on years of the author's working in India, this novel communicates the chaos, the noise, the despair, the hope, the resourcefulness of a struggling population, living in an endless slum right outside Mumbai airport.
It's often amusing, often breathtaking, equally often heart-rending. Vividly written, prepare to "go there", live it, feel it, when you pick up this book.

France on Oct 02, 2013

J. Lavoie: The more that these make-shift living arrangments for the poor in third world countries are exposed, hopefully, the more 'future leaders' will do something for these poverty stricken people who have no choice but to live in these slum shacks without a promise or a dream. These unfit home-built shelters with no amenities (but what is found or purchased in the vacinity) are called squallers. There are too many of these unfit city shelters existing in our world today.

Even though India is now a democratic society, still their caste system remain in place: People at the bottom (eco/socio) are the poorest of the poor, and thus are treated as degenerates and nobodys. These people have no future due to the status they are born into. They are not protected by their government for modification standards regarding the all-around unhealthy home setting. By this I mean that these poverty stricken people living on top of their seweage have no say in the non-environmental laws which could change the clean up of the rampid sewage streets, their polluted rivers and streams, as well as the gargage dumps that welcome them to forage for material assets to be sold, to becoming a possible...

United States on Aug 23, 2013