
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
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Narrated by:
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Sunil Malhotra
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By:
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Katherine Boo
About this listen
National Book Award Winner
New York Times best seller.
Named one of Time’s 10 best nonfiction books of the decade.
One of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, USA Today, New York, The Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday.
In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.
As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”, might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal.
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the listener headlong into one of the 21st century’s hidden worlds - and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.
Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, People, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The Seattle Times, The Nation, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Denver Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Week, Kansas City Star, Slate, and Publishers Weekly.
©2012 Katherine Boo (P)2012 Random HouseListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
Winner of the PEN Nonfiction Award
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award
Winner of the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award
“Inspiring...extraordinary...[Katherine Boo] shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.” (People)
“A tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.” (Judges, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award)
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Story
In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby—whom Nick had idolized at Oxford—and Catherine, who is highly critical of her family's assumptions and ambitions. As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family.
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Perfect Prose
- By Andre on 03-13-25
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The Savage Detectives
- A Novel
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: Eddie Lopez, Armando Durán
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation. The Savage Detectives is a hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It is the first of Bolaño's two giant works, with 2666, to be translated into English and is already being hailed as a masterpiece.
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Bolaño Poetic Gyre
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-14
By: Roberto Bolaño
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The Argonauts
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Maggie Nelson
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is an intimate portrayal of the complexities and joys of (queer) family making.
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A relaxing meditation on identity, gender and art
- By redhidari on 10-01-15
By: Maggie Nelson
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One Day
- The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America
- By: Gene Weingarten
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day - chosen completely at random - was Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, and much more....
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I'm giving this book more credit for its concept
- By J. F. Boyd on 12-24-19
By: Gene Weingarten
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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Men We Reaped
- A Memoir
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life - to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly Black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write, she realized the truth - and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships.
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Tough but important
- By Jermell Powell on 09-26-21
By: Jesmyn Ward
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2666
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, and others
- Length: 39 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Best Book I Read or Listened to in 2009
- By William on 01-05-10
By: Roberto Bolaño
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The Yellow Birds
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Powers
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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"The war tried to kill us in the spring," begins this breathtaking account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, 21-year-old Private Bartle and 18-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. Bound together since basic training when their tough-as-nails sergeant ordered Bartle to watch over Murphy, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for.
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Sad and Unforgettable
- By Buzz on 10-17-12
By: Kevin Powers
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
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The Year of Magical Thinking
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.
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Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it
- By Michael on 05-08-15
By: Joan Didion
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How to Be Both
- A Novel
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: John Banks
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving, genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths, and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real--and all life’s givens get given a second chance.
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Incompetent Foreign Pronunciation
- By J. Kahn on 06-28-15
By: Ali Smith
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Tree of Smoke
- A Novel
- By: Denis Johnson
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 23 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness.
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tree of smoke
- By ed spilka on 12-13-07
By: Denis Johnson
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Train Dreams
- A Novella
- By: Denis Johnson
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life. It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world.
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2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist
- By Louis on 06-20-12
By: Denis Johnson
What listeners say about Behind the Beautiful Forevers
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- LSR
- 04-02-12
Beautiful Story
This was such a gripping account, I had to keep checking references to ensure that it was not fiction, or even based on a real story. The book is told in the third-person but such deep observations and presence that you even feel like you are right there, and the author must have been onsite more frequently than not, over the years. It was such a fascinating way of life to be told. Surprisingly, I did not have pity or disgust for the poverty and the way the families live in this common slum but, just the opposite. Most of the studied characters I could see rising upward, at least relatively speaking. They were enterprising, tireless, tried to pursue their education and advancement. It was really a fascinating study which made me wonder if this was really a necessary step in the evolution of developing countries and their people.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Lisa M. Ide
- 01-23-16
Powerful
I started this book in hard copy, but when life kept getting in the way of my ability to find time to curl up with a good book, I turned to Audible to fill my commute hours with this masterpiece. (The narration was fantastic.) I actually started this book without knowing it is a work of nonfiction, and only realized it when I listened to the author's afterword. The most fantastic parts of this book, for me, are the respect the author shows for the characters and her restraint in how she describes the contrast of their lives from our lives and the lives of the people coming and going from the airport. She describes the lives and ambitions of each individual from a neutral place, without a hint of the patronization which could so easily and subconsciously pervade any depiction of lives in extreme poverty by one who is not. One of the most powerful moments in the book is when she takes a brief break from describing the tragedy that has turned two families against eachother to "listen in" on a Disney park executive's comments about how he just can't bring himself to visit a Universal theme park to check out the competition because he just can't stomach the idea of giving a penny to his competition. The author returns to the story of the families to describe how, despite the tragedy that has turned them into adversaries, they come together to help eachother fulfill a religious obligation. The contrast she creates with that brief snippet is so profound and moving, it haunted me for the rest of the book. Powerful read.
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2 people found this helpful
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- K.T.
- 06-04-12
See What Life is Like in the Slums of Mumbai
Would you try another book from Katherine Boo and/or Sunil Malhotra?
Probably not at this time.
Did Sunil Malhotra do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
Excellent job!
Do you think Behind the Beautiful Forevers needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
No.
Any additional comments?
If you want to learn about a realistic view of life in the slums of Mumbai, then this selection is for you --- a true and well-researched account of the lives of those living there. Listen to this Audible selection knowing that this is not a funny feel-good type of tome, but you will definitely appreciate the life you have after finishing it! Imagine what you would do to survive a life filled with oppression, hunger, corruption and desperation!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anna Karenina
- 12-05-13
Absolutely awesome
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. The book is incredibly enlightening as well as engrossing.
What other book might you compare Behind the Beautiful Forevers to and why?
A Fine Balance, the novel by Rohinton Mistry. Only this is all real.
Have you listened to any of Sunil Malhotra’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I haven't listen to any other, but he's fantastic on this audiobook.
What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?
There are no "tidbits"--everything is important! The most eye-opening parts of the book are about corruption, which is ubiquitous.
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- Abro
- 09-20-16
Fascinating Tale of a lovely and superstitious people.
Such a fascinating culture. I spent a week in Mumbai and this book has given me some greater insight to the people that I fell in love with.
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- Alison Willette
- 05-23-16
Realistic portrail of Mumbai slum
I loved the story. At times I found it difficult to follow all of the different people and personalities within the story. I think that if the reader could have had more variations in his voice it would have improved the flow and the understanding of individuals in the book. Aside from that I found it to be moving. I am motivated to improve impoverished nation's because of my job, but this book made me wish that I could share those experiences that were the most demanding of their fortitude with them.
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- Inga's Adventures
- 11-11-18
Well written
This is a well researched and tight story that will entertain but also make you think. It's not always easy but it's an authentic story.
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- Cynthia Hall
- 03-08-15
A Must READ!
Any additional comments?
I am so lucky to be born in the USA!!!! Such a sad life for so many people.
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- Lisa Carnes
- 03-07-21
astonishingly real
a true accounting and an in depth look at the lowest level of an impoverished society and how people cope. fascinating.
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- Sandra Petterson
- 11-18-23
Sad
It’s sad and a great insight to see that India has such a corrupt government in the slums.
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