Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

Apr 09, 2013 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rating: four horrfied, repulsed, politically appalled stars of five

See the review on Shelf Inflicted!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

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May 13, 2012 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: cultural-and-social-commentary, nonfiction, indian-subcontinent-and-surrounding

I struggled a lot with how to review this because it's hard to separate the quality of the book from how it made me feel. So let me first say that Katherine Boo is an excellent writer and a dedicated observer. The book often reads like a novel, although it may not be the kind of novel you'd want to read.

Life in the Annawadi slum is brutal, and sometimes your neighbors are the ones most determined to make you suffer. The specific residents Boo chose to follow over a four-year period ended up emb...more I struggled a lot with how to review this because it's hard to separate the quality of the book from how it made me feel. So let me first say that Katherine Boo is an excellent writer and a dedicated observer. The book often reads like a novel, although it may not be the kind of novel you'd want to read.

Life in the Annawadi slum is brutal, and sometimes your neighbors are the ones most determined to make you suffer. The specific residents Boo chose to follow over a four-year period ended up embroiled in some ugly situations brought on by fellow sufferers who should have been helping rather than trying to hurt.

I had to work at not hating some of the people who live behind the wall advertising "BEAUTIFUL FOREVER" floor tiles. The competition for limited resources and the need for most human beings to feel superior to someone makes many of the slumdwellers behave abominably, thinking only of their own survival while lying, cheating, and ruining the lives of their neighbors.

I felt agitated the entire time I was reading this book. I can understand the author's purpose in showing us what life is like in a Mumbai slum, and how changes in the global economy affect those who subsist on the garbage left by the wealthy. I certainly feel compassion for these people, but aside from that, all I can feel is helpless. Perhaps the author does too good a job of illustrating how difficult it is to provide assistance. Corruption is so prevalent that foreign and domestic monies intended for educating and housing the poor never reach those in need.

I don't see a lot of hope for change here, although many of the Annawadi residents cling to hope while others around them are eating rat poison to escape the misery. This is the one thing I did find that was most praiseworthy about some of the people in the slum. Their hope for something better remains alive, and they keep trying one thing after another, no matter how many times they get beaten down and refused. They are brave and resourceful, even if they have to lie to themselves every day just to keep that hope from dying. (less)

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Apr 19, 2013 ·Karen· rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: india-pakistan, non-fiction

Well, here’s a nice irony, to be reading this in the week that the results of a UNICEF survey reveal that one in seven German children and young people are unhappy, dissatisfied with their life or situation. Germany ranks only 22nd in the category ‘life satisfaction’ . Tssk tssk. All those poor little rich kids.

It would be a horrendously hackneyed platitude to now bang on about those who are worse off than you – what’s that supposed to say? Look, look, children, look at Mumbai garbage scavengers...more Well, here’s a nice irony, to be reading this in the week that the results of a UNICEF survey reveal that one in seven German children and young people are unhappy, dissatisfied with their life or situation. Germany ranks only 22nd in the category ‘life satisfaction’ . Tssk tssk. All those poor little rich kids.

It would be a horrendously hackneyed platitude to now bang on about those who are worse off than you – what’s that supposed to say? Look, look, children, look at Mumbai garbage scavengers and the suppurating sores they suffer from clambering over razor wire to steal from dumpsters. See, see the rat bites that turn into boils and then erupt with worms. Take solace in thinking of others’ misery, add guilt to the burden of affluence, that’s supposed to make you feel better, is it? A nice bit of poverty porn and then we can go home to sleep in clean sheets and have freshly squeezed orange juice and muesli for breakfast?

Katherine Boo does not dwell pruriently on mass misery, although misery there is. She describes directly, and without sentimentality, individual lives to give a harrowing portrait of Annawadi, the slum clutching at the skirts of Mumbai airport, behind the hoardings that advertise Italian tiling to make your home beautiful forever. What shocks and disturbs even more than the dirt, pestilence and overcrowding is how capricious a master rules these people’s lives. For the life-blood of the system they live in is bribery and corruption, at every single strata of society, from the Tamil who runs a couple of garish video console games as a loss leader, lending the road boys the rupee they need to play Metal Slug 3 and thus locking them into dependency on him as agent for the rubbish they harvest; the slum school set up to rake in government funding where children are taught only on the days an inspector is due; to the police who give metal strippers a tip-off about lax construction site security for a share in the profit; through to the executive officer of the state of Maharashtra and the Corporator of Ward 27 who reinvents himself as low-caste, with all the requisite documentation, in order to comply with a new legal requirement that all candidates for election should come from the lower caste; right up to the rich who pay out small sums to part slum dwellers from their property and thus reserve for themselves certificates of long-term residency that qualify them for ownership of the valuable new government-funded slum replacement housing.

Such a structure of grace and favour patronage, bribery and terror is entirely arbitrary, and unfathomable to most. Who to bribe? Will it be effective, or will that person just bunk off with the money and no favour returned? Will you be tied forever to a blackmailing scheme that demands more and more for less and less, or is it true when the slumlord says best to pay up front, buy yourself out of trouble, because it will only get more costly as time goes by and fronts harden?

The front cover of this book promises ‘Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum’ and for the greatest part of the narrative I could not, for the life of me, detect any hope whatsoever. But there is one triumph, one that here in the so-called First World would be paltry, but in Annawadi represents a truly magnificent victory. Three members of the Husain family are arrested. Throughout the beatings by the police and the long, long delays in the proceedings at court, they refuse to try to buy their way out, maintaining their innocence. They defy the threats of further beatings if they don’t pay up, they deny the executive officer of the state a bribe to make her report more favourable, pointing out that they are paying a lawyer to defend them. She doesn’t let up. When there is a change of judge hearing the proceedings she comes back to try again, bringing with her the husband of Fatima, the woman whose death has led to their being charged.

The new judge was severe and likely to find the Husains guilty, the special executive officer said. Fortunately, Fatima’s husband was willing to take back the case. He would cancel his testimony and the testimony of his late wife, upon which the trial would shut down. The price for ending the trial would be two lakhs-more than four thousand dollars.
The special executive officer seemed to be banking on the ignorance of slumdwellers: that the Husains wouldn’t understand that the case against them was a criminal one, brought by the state of Maharashtra, and that Fatima’s husband didn’t have the power to call it off, no matter how much the Husains paid.
Before telling the woman off, Abdul’s father checked his facts with his lawyer. He wanted to make sure that what he’d gleaned about legal process from reading Urdu newspapers was correct. It was. Finally, a small triumph of information over corruption.

This, perhaps, is where we can draw a comparison between that other world and ours, not to hammer into those depressed rich kids just how lucky they are to be able to go to the school they resent, to have food and a comfortable home when they’ve never known anything else, but rather to point out that actually, the system we have here is not as bad as it seems. The European political class may appear (be?) depraved, and Berlusconi certainly is no poster boy of moral rectitude, but a Jerome Cahuzac has to resign, and a German president with a tarnished past also resigns and is indicted for corruption. The rule of law is something that we can usually rely on to catch the bastards, no matter where they are on the ladder of influence. (Except if the bastard is Berlusconi.)
But how much courage did it take for Christian Wulff to refuse to pay a 50,000 euro fine in exchange for the state prosecutors dropping all charges, something that would also look suspiciously like buying your way out of trouble? He no doubt has access to the best (most expensive) legal advice. And although his reputation may have been damaged, he can still draw a generous state pension and also stands a good chance of being completely rehabilitated if found not guilty. What has he lost, what does he stand to gain? The Husains, on the other hand, had their small living destroyed by their time in remand prison. Guilty, not guilty, makes no material difference to them, the family has hit bottom. A moral victory is theirs, but they have to pay an enormous price for something that is precious only to themselves, their self-esteem. The balance of what they have lost, what they have gained is skewed towards the loss.

How would I design a society if I didn’t know where in its hierarchy I would be placed–if I didn’t know whether I would be a person of wealth and power, or a poor and vulnerable person? What system would I create that would be fair? There’s the rub.
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Jul 15, 2012 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bio-memoir, india, non-fiction, audiobook-e-book, 2012-reads

Boo won me over when she presented the impoverished people of Annawadi as individuals with worries, ambitions and desires as everyday as yours or mine rather than victims. I found myself brokenhearted by the recurrent police and governmental corruption they must wade through in order to just exist. Apparently, it isn't enough that most are ill from their habitats and scorned by society. In spite of their loss of dreams and position, I was impressed by the resilience of most.

This book received a...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Praj rated it 3 of 5 stars

It’s been a distressful morning. The milkman won’t be delivering the daily liter of milk; his house was razed by the local municipality. The family of six has to do with a makeshift shanty to prevent them from drowning in the dense showers of late night rains. Futile visits to the local political corporator and pleading to a rigid money-lender for a loan is what his weekly schedule looks like. Troublesome as it is for a detour to the supermarket for packaged milk, my domestic help decided to ca...more

It’s been a distressful morning. The milkman won’t be delivering the daily liter of milk; his house was razed by the local municipality. The family of six has to do with a makeshift shanty to prevent them from drowning in the dense showers of late night rains. Futile visits to the local political corporator and pleading to a rigid money-lender for a loan is what his weekly schedule looks like. Troublesome as it is for a detour to the supermarket for packaged milk, my domestic help decided to call it a day as it is the last day to confirm her receipt for a governmental pension of her deceased alcoholic husband. For all those vicious thrashings and numerous marital abuses she stomached for a decade, she truly deserved the so-called posthumous alimony; although a pitiful sum. Oh! What a wretched day it is!! Not only do I have to check the availability of another maid, but go and pick my dry cleaning as the delivery boy was arrested for trying to sell vegetables on the street corner disregarding any philanthropic duties to the patrolling authorities. Dear Lord! Am I the only victim of such suffrage? Mercifully, my chauffeur seems to have escaped from any such problematic liabilities. His tardiness has got me a bit worried on missing my blow-dry appointment. However, I reckon shifting the spa-medic detoxification an hour later could comfortably ease the tea-garden brunch.
It’s still 9am and I’m half way through my anti-bacterial wipes. I need to make quick stop at the local pharmacy for more supplies; but the snail speed of this wretched sedan is making me perspire through the cool air of the designed interiors, dreading the inevitable. A knock on the window and I’m in no mood of indulging an urchin while fretting over the scarcity of the anti-germ armament. Few more taps and he moves on to the next door amongst the sea of vehicles. Bombay traffic; oh so nauseating! Couple red lights and I’m ready for a literary dialogue over freshly brewed oolong. As I alight from the car, a pair of white retinas stares at me with a half-broken smile. The offering of green pistachios macaroons seemed supplementary to the actual fancy; a few more arguments over the importance of food and then the ultimate dispensing of monetary funds. The cool sea breeze brushing my cheeks sarcastically mocks the cup of warm tea. I’m finally at peace. Argh! This unnerving stench rising from a nearby engulfment of reclaimed land festering with juxtaposed shoddy shanties ruins the temporary nirvana. Such a disgrace for a posh high-rise! I must take up this issue at the upcoming Housing meeting.

While meticulously placing their cups avoiding the untimely melody of their exquisite china, the urban snobs critique twirling their freshly sprayed coifs; applauded the heroic effort of a certain Katherine Boo for having the balls to submit herself to the putrid cocktail of sewage stench and decaying garbage for nearly four years. It is indeed a medal of honor; elsewhere the opinionated lecturer making a run out of the narrow congested lanes before the eau de cologne evaporates from their handkerchiefs. Katherine, in a news interview said that after her research on the inner-city housing in Oklahoma city, she was curious about the institution of poverty. What ways do the ‘poor’ people execute to get out their impoverish survival? How did they thrive in the existing circumstances? What would you want me to say? To pronounce, that poverty has become the selling point of Indian literary panorama? Does romanticizing poverty give a feel of diving into some kind of exotic uncharted waters? Or does it give one’s heart a philanthropic illusion? On an eventful itinerary to India pick out a slum and pen the daily events of a close knitted neighborhood huddled together in congested housing. If, appreciated by the designated literary elites, spare a thought towards the unfortunate over overtly publicized Literary fest and if Boyle &Co. decides to take another shot at the Oscars; Hallelujah!!! Stories are not only born in slums, allow the tales to pass through through many corners of the vast Indian landscapes. The residents of Annawadi are audacious, unafraid and above all optimistic dreamers. Poverty is the biggest crime. It is better to be a cold-blooded murderer, but it is a sin to be poor. To be poor is to be guilty of one or another thing. Commiserating Raja Kamble- the toilet cleaner; rag picker Sunil, one-legged Sita and the vulnerable Asha who dreams to be the first ever slumlord demeans their very existence. Applaud these residents of Annawadi through the lines of this text as they struggle through the dodgy circumstances with true grit; for if it was one of us we would sooner or later walk the path of death.

In a land where the supermarket does not boast ten different brands of toothpastes, give an Ayn Rand to a youth standing in the ration line and see a potent explosive rise. Crony capitalism, corruption, poverty and economic disparity are necessary evils in a country that is racing at an hare’s speed to meet the global finishing line. The sinister underbelly of Mumbai proliferates with every rise and fall in oil trade stocks. Does that give a leeway to the privileged to dig deep in the trenches and frolic in the slush? Stop romanticizing poverty!! Recognize the white elephant in the room and pen an epic of crony capitalism and its hoarders. Wouldn't it then be fun to see a panel of illustrious erudite critique the printed words. Would they find it rewarding as the scriptures of impecunious nether world or dismiss it as an unpatriotic insanity like they do with most of Arundhati Roy’s books. There my dearies lay the valid underbelly of a blossoming India and not through impoverished assiduous lives.

I reckon the raspberry macaroons go very well with oolong and I might skip the Housing meeting . As for my concerned nirvana I’ll just spray some Comme des Garçons,

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May 05, 2012 Suzanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is much scarier than any STEPHEN KING novel. I KEPT ON ASKING HOW THIS COULD NOT BE FICTION. I knew that Mumbai was impoverished, in the past. Yet , I read about the growing middle and professional classes. I saw specials on TV, which showed beautiful new apartment complexes.
According to Boo's book,the "Undercity" is still there. It is being squished as the planners grab every inch from the poor. The corruption of every institution is more pervasive than I can imagine. I wished that this w...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Belle per sempre” sono le parole usate per reclamizzare le ceramiche italiane nei manifesti attaccati al muro che divide lo slum di Annawadi dal quartiere internazionale adiacente all’aeroporto di Mumbai, capitale finanziaria dell’India, che si affaccia sul mar Arabico, la quarta città più popolosa del mondo con oltre venti milioni di abitanti.
Ho iniziato a leggere il libro spinta da una recensione letta in un giornale e convinta di trovare un romanzo in cui fiction e realtà fossero bilanciate...more “Belle per sempre” sono le parole usate per reclamizzare le ceramiche italiane nei manifesti attaccati al muro che divide lo slum di Annawadi dal quartiere internazionale adiacente all’aeroporto di Mumbai, capitale finanziaria dell’India, che si affaccia sul mar Arabico, la quarta città più popolosa del mondo con oltre venti milioni di abitanti.
Ho iniziato a leggere il libro spinta da una recensione letta in un giornale e convinta di trovare un romanzo in cui fiction e realtà fossero bilanciate in modo da creare una rappresentazione seppur parziale della realtà indiana, con personaggi emblematici e problematiche sociali concrete. Ho trovato un reportage giornalistico scritto da Katherine Boo, giornalista del New Yorker, vincitrice del Pulitzer e del National Magazine Award, frutto di una ricerca sia documentale che di testimonianze dirette svolta nel periodo dal novembre 2007 al marzo 2011 nello slum, e la storia raccontata è reale come reali sono i protagonisti. L’ho capito presto, trovandomi alle prese con uno stile giornalistico, abbastanza piatto e cronachistico, che non si preoccupa tanto del linguaggio, degli intrecci della trama e dei temi da trattare in un romanzo sociale, quanto di raccontare la semplice sopravvivenza dei protagonisti, donne e bambini in primo luogo, in una baraccopoli costruita abusivamente in un terreno di proprietà dell’aeroporto internazionale, vicina ad un canale di scolo dei rifiuti degli eleganti hotels internazionali che si trovano al di là del muro, nelle cui strade giocano bambini sporchi e affamati che lavorano raccogliendo i rifiuti che gli hotels e l’aeroporto producono, rivendendoli poi alle imprese che li riciclano, dove lavorano e cucinano donne giovani invecchiate dalla fatica fuori e dentro lo slum, che per arrotondare i pochi soldi si dedicano alla prostituzione nelle strade vicine frequentate dagli stranieri, dove si ubriacano uomini che anziché cercarsi un misero lavoro –che hanno perso o non hanno mai avuto- bevono per non pensare a nulla e sfogano la rabbia sulle donne inermi.
“Tutt’attorno a noi ci sono rose. E noi siamo la merda tra le rose” dice uno dei ragazzini protagonista del libro.
Su tutti domina la voglia di uscire di là, di andarsene da quella miseria che uccide, di sollevarsi dalla condizione in cui la casta di appartenenza costringe a stare, o con un buon matrimonio o arricchendosi con il commercio; purtroppo la vita dei più miseri tra i miseri è così insicura che la speranza nel futuro non riesce ad attecchire perché può capitare un qualsiasi evento fortuito che ti butta a terra e perdi in un attimo tutto quello che avevi guadagnato con fatica. Si è soli, abbandonati a sé stessi, in lotta con il mondo, senza nessuna protezione. O meglio, la protezione,pur se incerta, devi pagarla, perché la corruzione regna incontrastata, le mazzette circolano in ogni ambiente, per i vivi e anche per i morti.
Riporto le parole dell’autrice in una nota finale, che fanno riflettere anche il lettore occidentale alle prese con la peggiore crisi economica mondiale:” Nell’era della globalizzazione, un’epoca di lavori ad hoc, precari, ed estremamente competitiva, la speranza non è finzione. La povertà più estrema è gradualmente alleviata, in modo non omogeneo e tuttavia significativo. Ma mentre il capitale fluisce rapidamente in tutto il pianeta e l’idea di lavoro fisso è diventata anacronistica, l’incertezza della vita quotidiana riesce a polverizzare la speranza individuale. Idealmente il governo allevia una parte dell’incertezza. Troppo spesso uno Stato debole la intensifica e si dimostra più abile ad alimentare la corruzione che le potenzialità umane.”
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May 08, 2012 Clare Cannon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adults, non-fiction

I knew this wouldn't be a feel-good book, but somehow the evocative title and the tragically poetic cover led me to be unprepared for the shocks that awaited from page 1 right through to the end.

My advice to all who want to read it: first, read the author's note at the end, it is excellent. It situates the book in its proper context and prepares you to take it seriously. Without this anchor, the melodrama of the narrative seems like Days of Our Lives set in Indian slums. But apart from the auth...more

I knew this wouldn't be a feel-good book, but somehow the evocative title and the tragically poetic cover led me to be unprepared for the shocks that awaited from page 1 right through to the end.

My advice to all who want to read it: first, read the author's note at the end, it is excellent. It situates the book in its proper context and prepares you to take it seriously. Without this anchor, the melodrama of the narrative seems like Days of Our Lives set in Indian slums. But apart from the author's admission that she used 'interpretive language', this is a true story.

The author explains that her subjects were generally short on words, which is why there is minimal dialogue in the predominantly third person narrative. She resorted to 'interpretive language' because she felt that the lack of variation in the language of these overworked people didn't reflect the deep idiosyncratic intelligences that she had detected in them in the four years she spent conducting interviews and spending time with them. Unfortunately it's difficult to know whether the abundant swearing and rough talk is real or part of her 'interpretation'.

We read about real struggles which reveal what these people must do to survive. The text shows the bitter reality of the caste system, and the difficulty faced by anyone who wants to break out of it. But don't imagine epic struggles of good versus evil, what's recorded here is the bitter, sometimes life-threatening squabbles between desperate neighbours in a shanty town. In addition to the language, frequent mature themes show that life is rough for most of these people, but though we are told about it on every page, the style of writing does not make us experience it. It feels like a rough documentary - peppered with coarse language - rather than an adult novel. We see suicides and attempts, prostitution, self-maiming, and we see the people's helplessness, the impossibilities they face, the injustice, and the corruption. But particularly among the young we also see hope, hard work, integrity and understanding.

It is not an attractive image of the rise of capitalist India, and though we know it is a narrow view which only considers one slum in one city, its reality carries weight.

Some more things that impressed me from the author's note: she says that the people who feature knew that everything they did and said would not come out 'pretty' in the book, but they participated because they shared the author's concerns about the distribution of opportunity in a fast changing country.

She found that the children were more sensitive, they were not yet the cold, indifferent adults who turn the other way when someone is hurt, or shrug when someone suicides. It is said that death matters little in India because the Hindus believe in reincarnation, yet she found that the young were shocked by death, and that if the adults were less so it was because conditions 'had sabotaged their innate capacity for moral action'.

She says: "From where we are, it is easy to overlook that in these conditions it is blisteringly hard to be good. The astonishment is that some people are good, and that many people try to be. If the house is crooked and crumbling, and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?" www.GoodReadingGuide.com (less)

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Feb 14, 2012 Abhijit Srivastava rated it 4 of 5 stars

Stare. Stare straight. That’s the first thing I did after finishing reading it, and for quite a long time. I didn’t know what I was looking at, or more aptly, looking for – of course, there was this wall ahead, 3 feet ahead – but I wasn’t looking at it; I was looking for ‘faces’; faces that I’ve imagined floating between my eyes and the pages of the book while I was reading it; faces that don’t resemble anyone I know, but faces that might resemble closely with the people living right now, even a...more Stare. Stare straight. That’s the first thing I did after finishing reading it, and for quite a long time. I didn’t know what I was looking at, or more aptly, looking for – of course, there was this wall ahead, 3 feet ahead – but I wasn’t looking at it; I was looking for ‘faces’; faces that I’ve imagined floating between my eyes and the pages of the book while I was reading it; faces that don’t resemble anyone I know, but faces that might resemble closely with the people living right now, even as I write this and you read this, in Mumbai. Faces that I’ll see as I go to bed this morning, for time just passed as I immersed myself in this book.

Quite frankly, this book is like no other book of non-fiction written on contemporary India ever. This is the splendid result of a thorough and persistent research coupled by unrelenting passion and determined will to see through a gigantic task taken by a (relative) foreigner in a land where many of the native citizens choose to ignore the lead protagonists of this work in a manner that may border on their forced invisibleness.

The story is powerful, and as noted by Amartya Sen, it “simultaneously informs, agitates, angers, inspires and instigates”. The deaths (read suicides) of some of the lead characters are portrayed in the exact simplicity as their going to sleep after a hard day’s work. Sometimes, you maybe able to see it coming, but at other times, it will strike you out of the blue, and you may want to re-read the passage to digest that dreaded line.

This book is about India that many Indians try to conceal behind fancy establishments. Instead of attacking and eradicating the poverty, they attack and eradicate the poor. Though based in Mumbai, one can see different shades of the story unfolding daily, with varying degrees of volatility, in any other Indian metropolitan city. As a matter of fact, I see a fraction of the Annawadi slum (portrayed in the book) daily as I take that half kilometre walk to Saket Metro station in New Delhi. Maybe, i was imagining their faces as I was reading this book.

All this is going to stay with me for a while.
I’d suggest this book to anyone who wants to see more of India than those hyper-marketed “Incredible India” advertisements.
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Mar 30, 2012 Mikki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lit-asia, nonfiction, politics-world, social-cultural

There is a lot to digest here and will take some time to adequately put into words. Katherine Boo has so effectively taken a subject and people most often overlooked and introduced them to the reader so intimately -- taking us into their homes, wants, struggles of life and survival -- that one is left feeling a bit disoriented after closing the book's pages. What now do I do with all of this information? It's better to know the world's injustices instead of remaining untouched, isn't it? Yes, bu...more

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Dec 06, 2012 Jean rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

If you liked Slumdog Millionaire you will probably like this book. I hated Slumdog Millionaire and I didn't like this book. I know it's a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I really tried. Just couldn't get into it.

It's about Annawadi, a slum that grew up in the area of the airport in Mumbai. Boo tells the stories of several people who are trying to rise above their situations. Abdul is a smart teenager who sells scrap metal and is saving to move out. Asha is a woman who is trying to use political powe...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Trish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: asia, audio, nonfiction, unutterably-painful, gritty, political-science, social-science, something-completely-new

This is a difficult book to read. I actually think we might get more out of it on a second, deeper reading, once the horror of the subject matter has been fully revealed and we have braced ourselves. Boo is very matter of fact about the most stomach-churning realities of life in a Mumbai slum and after listening to Sunil Malhotra, the reader of the audiobook, relate all this in several hundreds of pages and hours of listening, one begins to wonder why Boo wrote it this way. Life is so miserable...more This is a difficult book to read. I actually think we might get more out of it on a second, deeper reading, once the horror of the subject matter has been fully revealed and we have braced ourselves. Boo is very matter of fact about the most stomach-churning realities of life in a Mumbai slum and after listening to Sunil Malhotra, the reader of the audiobook, relate all this in several hundreds of pages and hours of listening, one begins to wonder why Boo wrote it this way. Life is so miserable that one wonders how these people live. By the end of the book, we know that many of them do not, in fact, live. They die, often by their own hand, often from disease, or congenital deformities, or perhaps they are killed by the carelessness or blind revenge of others.

The story was one long saga of life in one particular slum near the Mumbai airport, Annawadi, from 2007-2011. Of course I wondered how Boo managed it—to view with such depth the inner and outer lives of slum dwellers. At the end of the book, Boo gives us an Afterword that explains her thinking for arranging the mind-numbing information in the way she did. “Statistics have a tenuous relation to lived experience.” Boo decided she “would follow the inhabitants of a single unexceptional slum over the course of a couple years and see who got ahead and who didn’t and why, as India prospered.” She used thousands of government documents, endless interviews, videotape, still photography, tape recorders, and newspaper reports to create a window into a world none of us will ever see.

The families she followed were not passive, but ingeniously devised ways to manage their lives in an unequal society that used bribes and intimidation to keep lower caste and low earners in a position of abject poverty. The people she talks about are real, and the events are real. Boo says that she is

“continually struck by the ethical imaginations of young people, even those in situations so desperate that selfishness would be an asset. Children have little power to act on those imaginations and by the time they grow up, they may have become the adults who keep walking as a bleeding waste-picker slowly dies on the roadside, who turn away when a burned woman writhes, whose first reaction when a vibrant teenager drinks rat poison is a shrug. So how does that happen?”

This is a remarkable document, and it is important. But it is really hard to read or listen to.

“It is easy from a safe distance to overlook the fact that in undercities governed by corruption, where exhausted people rely on scant terrain for very little, it is blisteringly hard to be good. The astonishment is that some people are good, and that many people try to be. All those invisible individuals who everyday find themselves faced with dilemmas not unlike the one Abdul confronted, slab in hand, one July afternoon when his life exploded. If the house is crooked and crumbling and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?”

A note on the audio production: Sunil Malhotra does a remarkable job of presenting with restraint and a reporter’s sense of distance a non-fiction piece describing despicable living conditions. Boo and her team are remarkably equable when raising issues that make us squirm with discomfort. Sunil's ability to convey different Indian accents within a sentence of one another alleviates the inevitable confusion that comes when a group meeting is described. Altogether, it was a remarkable piece of reportage by a number of dedicated individuals, all of whom should be rightly proud of this ground-breaking work.
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Jan 28, 2013 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, literary-exploration-2013-challenge, nonfiction, 2013-favorites, favorites, lush-writing, thinker

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-mar...more 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 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?(less)

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Feb 21, 2012 Caren rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-nonfiction

I had read that this book was well-written and would probably win some awards, which is why I picked it up. Wow! I read through practically in one gulp, hardly coming up for air. This is one compelling read, and the truly stunning thing about it is that it is all true. You simply cannot walk away untouched. The author is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered social inequalities in the past. This is her first book, in which she chronicles several years (from late 2007 to early 2011)...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Stuart rated it 4 of 5 stars

In many ways, Behind the Beautiful Forevers is an impressive achievement. Boo goes into a slum in Mumbai and somehow manages to find detail after detail about the inner lives of its inhabitants. She then assembles those details into a novelistic treatment of how an interconnected group of citizens lives and takes each precarious day at a time. As Boo points out more than once, these people are not of the lowest of India's economic classes. They have roofs over their heads, they have sources of r...more In many ways, Behind the Beautiful Forevers is an impressive achievement. Boo goes into a slum in Mumbai and somehow manages to find detail after detail about the inner lives of its inhabitants. She then assembles those details into a novelistic treatment of how an interconnected group of citizens lives and takes each precarious day at a time. As Boo points out more than once, these people are not of the lowest of India's economic classes. They have roofs over their heads, they have sources of revenue, and their children can and do attend school. But their lives are awful, the petty squabbles between them can result in total collapse, and while most possess hope, it's a wonder just how and why these people don't just give up. The human spirit certainly ignores logic and reality time and time again, and for good reason.

For me, the novelistic approach used here is a bit off key. I understand the rationale behind it - to give this story as large an audience as possible - but the flip side is that this approach gives the effort a voyeuristic feel that reduces its emotional impact. It's not that Boo doesn't treat the lives she details with sensitivity. She does and she certainly can't be accused of sensationalism. It's that there is something inherently strange in using a narrative technique that assumes the author can literally get inside the head of a 15-year-old kid in a slum. It's a leap that I can't make.

That criticism aside, there is much to admire here. The doggedness and courage of the author. Her compassion. Her assured, simple and effective use of language. She shines a light on a culture that almost all choose to ignore. She doesn't romanticize or sentimentalize the lives detailed in order to make this work more palatable. It's a realistic and honest portrait. If the sociology of the world's poor interests you, and you can suspend disbelief that a white middle class woman can, through three years of immersion, fully understand the minds and motives of slum dwellers, then Boo's book will not only give you an unvarnished view, but will also resonate and be a captivating read.(less)

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Jan 20, 2013 Mark Petrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

I spent many months in Mumbai over a few years around the turn of the century. I've spent days walking though some of the slums of the city working on a photography project. But, nothing I've done has come close to the creating the intimate portrayal of lives challenged over time that Katherine Boo has achieved in this book. Her tenacity and dedication to telling a complete and honest story is remarkable. She is a terrific writer - it's surprising that this is her first book or that she is not b...more

7 likes · like · see review

Dec 29, 2012 Donna LaValley rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Behind the Beautiful Forevers”

First the title should be explained: the book follows many people and families who live in the Annawadi slum which stretches out behind a long wall that separates it from Sahar Airport Road, leading to busy Mumbai Airport. The wall is covered with advertising; one particularly noticeable ad, plastered many times side by side, is for ceramic tile for the home, which will be “beautiful forever.” To describe where they live, they might say “Behind the beautiful forev...more “Behind the Beautiful Forevers”

First the title should be explained: the book follows many people and families who live in the Annawadi slum which stretches out behind a long wall that separates it from Sahar Airport Road, leading to busy Mumbai Airport. The wall is covered with advertising; one particularly noticeable ad, plastered many times side by side, is for ceramic tile for the home, which will be “beautiful forever.” To describe where they live, they might say “Behind the beautiful forevers” and everyone would know exactly where that was. Of course the author wanted to use these words for the irony. Slum dwellers build homes out of any material they can find and the result is haphazard and sometimes deadly.

Most of the characters, who are real people and whose real names are being used, make their living from collecting the trash generated by the airport. They disassemble and classify, then take it to a recycling place. As the population grows, fights break out over territory for trash. Ingenious and dangerous thievery develops.

After the full depth of the poverty, it is the ever-present corruption that strikes the reader. Even the charities (some very well known) were used in bribery schemes. The slum has “government” and ties to local police, who are so corrupt that it takes inside knowledge to know which ones to bribe successfully. They beat the unfortunate children as well as adults who come into their power.

The new concept for me was how endemic it was to blame another victim for one’s own misfortunes. Instead of sympathy for one another, they preyed upon one another. They must have felt hopeless to address any “authorities” en masse over their issues, so did not unify. Hopelessness was shown in the suicides that were reported. Other deaths were due to constant exposure to pollution and unsanitary conditions.

The book is an excellent source of real information about how many of our fellow humans are living. Until the last chapter, it reads like a novel that you wish were a lot happier, then the author’s voice explains how she wrote the book and why. So many, many people ought to read this book. I highly recommend it.

I give it 4 stars because I reserve 5 star ratings for books so great that I keep them and reread them.

Students: This book is .6 credits for World Lit (English 202) in my class.

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Apr 29, 2013 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: gorgeous-prose, nonfiction, sociology-psychology

This is an amazing story about families who live and work in a Mumbai slum. Katherine Boo spent years reporting in the airport settlement of Annawadi, and the book unfolds like a novel. It's a fascinating look at how the underclass tries to survive and get ahead in a 21st-century economy.

One of the things I found most interesting was how the families were constantly fighting with others in the slum, literally over scraps. And the police, the courts, the hospitals -- everyone, really -- were so...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Emily Crowe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Holy cow--this book took me forever to finish. Perhaps if I'd been reading it other than the place where I was reading it, it would've taken significantly less time.

Which doesn't mean it wasn't a tremendously moving and thought-provoking piece of narrative nonfiction. It was. It's just nigh on impossible to imagine the world that Boo presents us, a world where lives are held so cheaply and religious conviction so dearly that a Hindu woman can reasonably choose to set herself on fire to frame he...more

6 likes · like · see review

Feb 21, 2013 Cheryl rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-nonfiction, biography-memoir, other-cultures

Katherine Boo married an Indian man and moved to India with him. As she had done while living in the U.S., she began to write about people who live in poverty. While in India she chose to write about the residents of Annawadi, a slum on the outskirts of the international airport in Mumbai, India. The result is a heartbreaking and indepth view into the everyday lives of some of the individuals as told from their perspective, and in their own words. Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a book that too...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 29, 2013 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, nonfiction

The tone of this nonfiction reportage is troublesome; Katherine Boo is very deeply inside the thoughts of her subjects, the garbage-picker denizens of a Mumbai slum. The tone is novelistic, and by treating them as "characters," she seems to be obscurely depriving her subjects of the agency and actuality of real people. Is it presumptuous or disrespectful? Three chapters in, I flipped ahead to the afterword that explains Boo's process, which I recommend doing if you're bothered by the tone (even...more The tone of this nonfiction reportage is troublesome; Katherine Boo is very deeply inside the thoughts of her subjects, the garbage-picker denizens of a Mumbai slum. The tone is novelistic, and by treating them as "characters," she seems to be obscurely depriving her subjects of the agency and actuality of real people. Is it presumptuous or disrespectful? Three chapters in, I flipped ahead to the afterword that explains Boo's process, which I recommend doing if you're bothered by the tone (even though it contains some spoilers). The afterword assured me that the book was based on so many interviews that she could write very specific lines about someone else's feelings at a moment in his life.

It was Boo's "luck" that an astoundingly dramatic event occurred in the place she chose to observe. That plotline pulls the reader into the book, but ultimately I felt more involved in the subjects' daily competition to gather, sort, and resell enough trash to pay for essentials and for the education and homes to allow them to improve their lives. Contrasted with the dramatic interpersonal events is a matter-of-fact presentation of a level of poverty so extreme that the subjects of this book aspire to what Americans would consider a poor lifestyle. By accepting their actual lives, sewage lake and all, the author can then show their aspirations without seeming to treat them patronizingly.

There is some very good writing here--to pluck a few lines from the beginning, we visit a "sumpy plug of a slum" and "Airport Road, a stretch where new India and old India collided and made new India late." I like that Boo can write with a certain poetic rhythm without miring the reader in a thesaurus. "He took care not to step on the emaciated junkies who nodded out behind the lilies."

I only give five stars to nonfiction books if I find they changed my perspective on something. I think this does qualify--not to imply that I had well-developed opinions on poverty in India before--because it sheds a lot of light on what makes people in developing countries move from the country to the cities, what ties they keep to their former homes, and how they can feel like they have roots in a community when they're just barely skirting homelessness.(less)

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Feb 27, 2013 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers for a book club that I recently joined. It is not the kind of book I usually read but I thought I'd give it a shot and I'm glad I did. This was a beautiful and informative story about individuals and families living in Annawadi, a slum of Mumbai, India.

I admit that my knowledge of Indian culture and geography is very limited. When I think of India I think of call centers, long weddings, reincarnation, a few Hindi myths and the highly publicized caste system,...more I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers for a book club that I recently joined. It is not the kind of book I usually read but I thought I'd give it a shot and I'm glad I did. This was a beautiful and informative story about individuals and families living in Annawadi, a slum of Mumbai, India.

I admit that my knowledge of Indian culture and geography is very limited. When I think of India I think of call centers, long weddings, reincarnation, a few Hindi myths and the highly publicized caste system, which I recently learned is outlawed although still practiced. Behind the Beautiful Forevers opened my eyes to the plight of the poorest citizens of India. Starvation, insanitary living conditions, illness, poor wages, hazardous work, child labor and political corruption are just some of the obstacles faced by those living in the Annawadi slum.

It was heartbreaking to read about the injustices they suffered, and the desolate poverty they experienced. There were times when I had to put the book down because it was so depressing, especially knowing that this was a true story and the events actually happened. Multiple people commit suicide, murders go unacknowledged by the authorities, hospitals refuse care, and the criminal "justice" system has little justice and a lot of corruption. And yet, even with the atrocities committed against the individuals and families chronicled in this book, the story is not without hope. Many of the characters, particularly in the younger generation, are still optimistic that things will change, and even among those who have accepted their condition, there are many that still have aspirations within the limits of their social and economic situations.

I admire Katherine Boo for undertaking this exploration of the lives of those living in such appalling conditions, although I do wonder what sort of effect her presence had on their lives. For example, in the author's note it's mentioned that the police were unhappy about the slumdwellers talking with Boo so I question whether the Hussain family was targeted (at least partly) by the police because of their participation in Boo's project. I also had questions about the morality of simply observing injustice without interfering for the sake of research. While many of the issues were societal and not easily addressed by one individual, I do think there were situations where Boo might have been able to make a positive impact. These issues are, of course, not limited to this book. They are common questions in the field of anthropology and the answers still aren't clear.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers is not an easy book to read, but it's incredibly worthwhile and educational. I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to better understand the plight of underprivileged people in our global society. (less)

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Jan 13, 2013 Rick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Katherine Boo's book about the struggles of impoverished Indians trying to succeed and survive while living in the slums of Mumbai is one of the most highly praised books of 2012. I think that recognition is well deserved. As interesting and horrifying as the book is to read, Boo's accomplishment needs to be more carefully acknowledged. She is an American reporter who was able to embed her self deeply within the Annawandi slum and get a host of slum residents to confide their deepest thoughts an...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 12, 2013 La Petite Américaine rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-want-my-money-back, sucked

See if you notice a pattern here.

With Three Cups of Tea, I had to stop and start over three different times in order to convince myself that it was a true story. Something about Greg Mortenson descending from a mountain like some biblical figure to a group of adoring villagers just didn't ring true for me. I even found myself thinking of how easy it would be for Mortenson to pocket the cash he was getting to build schools, but brushed aside my own suspicions, thinking that no one would do such...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Liz Nutting rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle, misc-nonfiction

A former professor of mine once related to me a story of the time he escorted Brazilian educator and activist Paulo Freire, author of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, on a driving tour of North Philadelphia. To most Americans, North Philly is the kind of neighborhood that defines poverty. Vacant and burned out houses, trash-filled streets and rampant drug crime. To Freire, however, North Philadelphia was a rich place--not rich in spirit or hope or faith, but rich as in wealthy, having money, not p...more

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May 22, 2012 Frances Greenslade rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's too easy to criticize this book. I had three days to spend in Mumbai this February, and, reading my Lonely Planet guidebook, I considered undertaking a "slum tour." According to Lonely Planet, there was a company that did it right, a "sensitive" tour. An Indian man I met had also recommended it. I even called the company. But I had to ask myself who had what to gain by it. And I couldn't go through with it because it was a question I couldn't answer. I'd seen the slums from the air, as we d...more It's too easy to criticize this book. I had three days to spend in Mumbai this February, and, reading my Lonely Planet guidebook, I considered undertaking a "slum tour." According to Lonely Planet, there was a company that did it right, a "sensitive" tour. An Indian man I met had also recommended it. I even called the company. But I had to ask myself who had what to gain by it. And I couldn't go through with it because it was a question I couldn't answer. I'd seen the slums from the air, as we descended into Mumbai airport. Somehow, seeing pictures of it doesn't lessen the shock of seeing it in real life, the row on row of monochromatic dun-coloured ragged shacks ringing Mumbai's glitziest highrise hotels.

In the taxi on the way into the city, I saw inhabitants from the slums rush out into traffic, selling postcards, flowers, bottles of water, or drawing a scarf to reveal a disfigurement that might move a foreigner to sympathy. I know enough of life to understand that poverty makes for desperation, but that people everywhere long at root for the same basic things: a better life for themselves and, most of all, their children.

Katherine Boo's book was recommended to me by someone who knew I'd been to India. I began it, admiring her fine writing, the ability to make non-fiction as compelling as fiction. The book is a page-turner. I want to know what happens to these people. I want everything to turn out well for them.

But I was unsettled by it, too, and not just because of the horror of the injustices they had to endure daily, from "sewage lakes" to corrupt police to vengeful neighbours. I kept asking myself how the author knew these intimate details of people's lives and innermost thoughts. And I kept feeling that there was something circus-y about it all. The slum tour, sensitively done? Finally, halfway through the book, I turned to the author's notes. What she has to say about her research is convincing. But more than that, her motives for writing the book made me feel that it was important to tell the stories and that her way of telling them means that the book will be read widely and the stories will be heard.(less)

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Nov 17, 2012 Massimiliano Laviola rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: americana

E' difficile classificare questo libro: non è un romanzo, non è un reportage giornalistico, forse è ambedue le cose. Pensando a un grande romanzo mi viene in mente Germinale di Zola, solo che qui non ci sono miniere di carobone ma cumuli di rifiuti in cui i bambini cercano qualcosa da riciclicare e rivendere.
La scrittrice riesce a riportare l'atrocità della vita nello slum e la totale assenza di qualsiasi sentimento. Non c'è affetto per i bambini, non c'è amore tra adulti, tutti lottano contro t...more

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Mar 14, 2013 K rated it 4 of 5 stars

Apparently everything is a 4 star for me right now. I can't help it, there are no half stars, and three seems too few for a book I liked.

I'm fascinated by modern India so knew I'd find something of interest in this book. What is odd about it is the quasi fictional way in which it is written - if you were handed the book with no foreknowledge and no end pieces, you would think it was fiction. Boo inserted herself in the community for a few years and adapted the various residents' stories into a...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars

The author writes for the New Yorker and has made a career of reporting from among poor people around the world. The story here is of several characters in a particular slum near the airport in Mumbai. The author lived with these people as explained in a prologue. The work obviously hasn't done as much for me as for others; it won the national book award for non-fiction this year. Some reviews claim that this book is non-fiction with human or heart-felt stories that rival fiction. Unfortunately,...more

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 30, 2012 Krystle Wong rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: india

Absorbing. I started off skeptical but ended wishing there would be a part 2. Boo does what she set out to do, which she says is to understand the forces and opportunities that allow people to rise out of or stay mired in poverty, though this is not immediately apparent because you become so absorbed by the organic detail of the slum-dwellers. The plot unravels like a novel, beginning with a jealous one-legged neighbour in a slum called Annawadi who sets herself on fire to spite the Husain famil...more Absorbing. I started off skeptical but ended wishing there would be a part 2. Boo does what she set out to do, which she says is to understand the forces and opportunities that allow people to rise out of or stay mired in poverty, though this is not immediately apparent because you become so absorbed by the organic detail of the slum-dwellers. The plot unravels like a novel, beginning with a jealous one-legged neighbour in a slum called Annawadi who sets herself on fire to spite the Husain family living next door. Boo's treatment is unsentimental but compelling. She really was that omniscient narrator and got you into the characters' heads, their motives, insecurities and transformations. But if you believe her Author's Note (and I am compelled to), none of it is fiction. Some intense reporting over the length of 3 years went into this book in order to get that effect.

A journalist by trade and a Pulitzer-winning one at that, Boo has managed to avoid stark condemnation of India's systemic corruption while painting a very vivid picture of how dire it all is for the poor in the world's largest democracy. As with all reports on Mumbai's slums, juxtaposition is a predictable theme, but I felt Boo inserted such contrasts stylishly and without fanfare hints at injustice - one of the many merits I felt elevated her book above that of journalistic nonfiction.

That said, I'm keeping this at 4 stars because I think a little more historical context would have served as valuable background for a country as complex as India. As one reviewer has pointed out (http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/a...), Boo has presented a somewhat incomplete picture of India's economic ills that could lead an ignorant reader to blame the corruption and the poverty on capitalist, open-economy, Mumbai-type India; in fact, many of India's problems are said to have stemmed directly from its confused socialist policies under Nehru and later Indira Gandhi.

If you liked this book, you might like 'Nothing to Envy' by Barbara Demick. Less literary, but absolutely stellar journalistic writing.

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1 like · like · see review

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