Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Abdul Husain: The Husains are Muslims, migrants from northern India, who have built some modest security for themselves in the trash-picking trade, largely through the sharp eyes and diligence of the oldest son, Abdul, the quintessential head-down striver.
• Asha: The Hindu clan is led by the formidable Asha, a ruthless fixer who aims to make herself the “slumlord” of Annawadi via her connection to the Hindu nationalist political party, Shiv Sena.
• Sunil: A perceptive twelve-year-old boy who sells his scavengings to Abdul.
• Mirchi: Abdul's brother — in whose education the family has sunk a lot of its resources — dreams of “wearing a starched uniform and reporting to work at a luxury hotel” like the ones attached to the nearby international airport.
• Manju: Asha's beautiful daughter, Manju, who promises to be the first female college graduate from Annawadi, though she’s too tender-hearted for her mother’s tastes and dreads being married off, as planned, to a boy from Asha’s home village.
• Meena: Manju’s best friend, whose Dalit (untouchable) family beats her every time she presumes to question their orders or plans for her.
• Karam Husain: Abdul's father.
• Fatima: The Husain's neighbor — one-legged, man-crazy and quarrelsome — who sets herself on fire.
• Sunita: Sunil's sister, two years his junior.
• Rahul: A pie-faced, snaggle-toothed ninth-grade Hindu boy - and Asha's son, as well as Mirchi's friend - who lived a few huts away from Abdul and worked at the Intercontinental hotel
• Zehrunisa: Abdul's mother.
• Ganesh: Rahul's youngest brother; Asha's youngest son.

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Mumbai, India
• Annawadi: A Mumbai shantytown.
• Airport Road
• Maharashtra
• Dongri
• Arthur Road Jail
• Sahar
• Vidarbha
• Saki Naka
• Zehmnisa
• Cooper Hospital
• Husains
• Shiv Sena
• Vasai
• Mumbal
• Mithi River
• Naupada
• Cargo Road

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Followed by La délicatesse.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Katherine Boo (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: HV4140 M86 B66 2011
• Dewey: 305.5'690954792

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Nonfiction › Government › Public Policy
• Books › Nonfiction › Current Events › Poverty
• Books › Travel › Asia › India

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• New York Times Book Review: It may seem grotesquely inappropriate to recall Levi’s struggles for survival in a Nazi camp while thinking of the apparently self-reliant individualists of a slum called Annawadi near Mumbai’s airport — the setting of Katherine Boo’s extraordinary first book, which describes a few months in the life of a young garbage trader, Abdul, and his friends and family. After all, these plucky “slumdogs” may be — in at least one recent fantasy — India’s next millionaires, part of the lucky 1 percent able to savor the five-star hotels that loom over Annawadi. Certainly, as noted by Boo — a staff writer at The New Yorker who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2000, when she was a journalist at The Washington Post — they are not considered poor by “official” Indian benchmarks; they are “among roughly 100 million Indians freed from poverty since 1991,” when the central government “embraced economic liberalization,” “part of one of the most stirring success narratives in the modern history of global market capitalism,” in which a self-propelling economic system is geared to reward motivated and resourceful individuals with personal wealth.