Behind the beautiful forevers
About this book
The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees fortune in the recyclable garbage of richer people. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a rural childhood, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to good times. But then, as the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed.
Subjects
- armut
- creative nonfiction
- description and travel
- economic conditions
- economic history
- fattiga
- history
- india
- india, social conditions
- large type books
- mumbai (india)
- new list 20120331
- new york times bestseller
- new york times reviewed
- nonfiction
- nyt:hardcover_political_books=2012-02-25
- poor
- poor, india
- poverty
- reading level-grade 11
- reading level-grade 12
- slums
- social classes
- social conditions
- sociology
- urban poor