Behind the Beautiful Forevers

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Behind the Beautiful Forevers.jpg
Author Katherine Boo
PublisherRandom House
Publication date
2012
Pages256 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4000-6755-8
OCLC 693809650
Website http://www.behindthebeautifulforevers.com/

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity is a non-fiction book written by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo in 2012. It won the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize among many others. [1] [2] It has also been adapted into a play by David Hare in 2014, shown on National Theatre Live in 2015. [3] The book describes a present-day slum of Mumbai, India, named Annawadi, and located near the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. It follows the interconnected lives of several residents, including a young trash picker, a female "slumlord," and a college student. [4] The author is an American woman who often visited Mumbai with her husband, who is from the area and had a job in the city.

Contents

Storyline

Annawadi is a slum created on land belonging to the Mumbai Airport. It was settled initially by migrant workers who had come to work on the airport in 1991 and stayed behind. The workers reclaimed a piece of airport land that was marshy and otherwise unusable. It quickly grew into a sprawling, densely inhabited zone of makeshift shacks, filled primarily with recent migrants to Mumbai from all over India and Pakistan. Ethnically, it is a mixture of many different groups and languages. Boo got to know the people there during the course of three years and in this work writes about the daily stresses and problems that inhabitants must contend with, such as poverty, hunger, disease, dirt, ethnic strife, violence, the constant fear that the airport authority will bulldoze their homes since they are technically there illegally, corruption, fatigue, weather, and the interpersonal conflicts that are augmented by being forced to live in close quarters with many others. She focuses on people such as Sunil, a stunted orphan who is a garbage picker; Abdul, a second generation garbage picker; Fatima, an emotionally troubled woman with one leg who dreams of a different life; Manju, who is trying to become the first female resident of Annawadi to graduate from college, and her mother, Asha, who is trying to attain the role of "slumlord", giving her access to power, money, and respect, but at the price of becoming part of the corruption around her. One of the central dramas around which the book centers is the self-immolation of Fatima, who then makes a false statement to the police that it was the fault of Abdul, his sister, and his father.

Background

Katherine Boo chose Annawadi to study because the scale of this "sumpy plug of slum" bordering a lake of sewage was small, and its location was fraught with possibilities. Annawadi sits beside the road to the Mumbai airport, on "a stretch where new India and old India collided and made new India late," as Boo explains in her introduction.[ citation needed ] The author has noted that she does not see the characters in the book as a representation of Indian people as a whole.[ citation needed ] They do not encompass what life is like for all people in Annawadi. Furthermore, the author sees herself in each character. Each one of them is undergoing struggles that they must learn to overcome.[ citation needed ]

Reception

On Book Marks, the book received a "rave" consensus based on nine critic reviews with nine being "rave". [5] The BookScore assessed it at an aggregated critic score of 9.2/10 based on an accumulation of British and American press reviews. [6] [7] In Bookmarks May/June 2012 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svg (4.5 out of 5) with the summary stating, "By any standard, it is a stunning achievement". [8]

Awards and honors

Editions

People depicted

See also

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References

  1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers". Random House . Retrieved 2014-02-02.
  2. 1 2 Leslie Kaufman (November 14, 2012). "Novel About Racial Injustice Wins National Book Award". The New York Times . Retrieved November 15, 2012.
  3. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers". National Theatre Live . Retrieved May 27, 2016.
  4. Katherine Boo (2012), Behind the Beautiful Forevers, New York: Random House, OL   25094126M
  5. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers". Book Marks. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  6. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo". The BookScore. Archived from the original on 1 Oct 2015. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
  7. "Katherine Boo - Behind the Beautiful Forevers". Culture Critic. Archived from the original on 23 Apr 2012. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
  8. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity By Katherine Boo". Bookmarks. Archived from the original on 5 Sep 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  9. John Williams (January 14, 2012). "National Book Critics Circle Names 2012 Award Finalists". The New York Times . Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  10. Alison Flood (5 October 2012). "Six books to 'change our view of the world' on shortlist for non-fiction prize". The Guardian . Retrieved 5 October 2012.
  11. Alison Flood (8 November 2012). "Guardian First Book award 2012 shortlist announced". The Guardian . Retrieved November 8, 2012.
  12. David Daley (December 23, 2012). "The What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012". Salon . Retrieved December 24, 2012.
  13. Staff writer (April 19, 2013). "Announcing the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved April 21, 2013.
  14. Carolyn Kellogg (August 14, 2013). "Jacket Copy: PEN announces winners of its 2013 awards". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 14, 2013.
  15. "The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century". The New York Times. 8 July 2024. Retrieved 17 July 2024.
  16. Boo, Katherine (2012). Behind the Beautiful Forevers. New York: Random House. ISBN   978-1-59413-618-4.