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

by Katherine Boo

Slumbai.

The family hut, purchased from a migrant who’d given up on Mumbai.

In captivity, there was nothing to preserve—nothing to buy, sell, or sort. Later he realized it was the first long rest he’d ever had, and that during it, something had happened to his heart.

Then a doctor entered the room with the results of the forensic investigation. Abdul was seventeen years old if he paid two thousand rupees, and twenty years old if he did not.

and the combined wealth of the hundred richest Indians was surging to equal nearly a quarter of the country’s GDP.