# Behind the Beautiful Forevers

- **Author:** Katherine Boo
- **Read:** November 2013
- **Topic:** Current Events & People
- **Published:** 2011
- **Pages:** 290
- **Picked by:** Jamie
- **ISBN-13:** 9780679643951
- **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16262891W
- **Cover:** https://rwbookclub.com/assets/images/covers/behind-the-beautiful-forevers-318.jpg
- **Canonical page:** https://rwbookclub.com/books/behind-the-beautiful-forevers/

## Synopsis

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.