“The slum had been settled in 1991 by a band of laborers trucked in from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to repair a runway at the international airport. The work complete, they decided to stay near the airport and its tantalizing construction possibilities. In an area with little unclaimed space, a sodden, snake-filled bit of brushland across the street from the international terminal seemed the least-bad place to love,” writes Katherine Boo in the prologue to her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This beautifully poignant novel, is a first for
Boo, a journalist for The New Yorker.
Boo chose to cover a section of Indian society that is largely ignored using her documentarian style to showcase the wide-range of human emotions and stories that she uncovered while staying in the Annawadi slum.
3,000 people crammed into 335 huts on a half of acre of land just outside of the Mumbai International Airport, the Annawadi slum serves as the main focus for Boo’s novel. Within the slum, Boo documents the life and struggles of many of the slum’s residents including Zehrunisa and her eldest son, Abdul. In 2008, the main job that most Annawadi children aspired for is scavenging and selling trash.
Abdul, forever being the realist makes a career out of this. He becomes an expert in garbage collecting and trading. “It was a fine time to be a garbage trader, not that that was the term passersby used for Abdul,” Ms. Boo writes. “Some called him garbage, and left it at that.”
However, not all of Abdul’s family shares his realism. His brother longs for a hotel job, a “clean job” as Ms. Boo describes and Abdul’s sister longs to redo the kitchen wall of their hut using the yellow tiles from the concrete wall that hides their slum from the view of the rest of the city. It is this desire that sets into motion the destruction of the family. The wall is shared by two families, on the other side of the wall lives a onelegged prostitute named Fatima.
As the wall is being worked on one day, Fatima is overcome with anger. “There is rubble in my rice!” she shouts. “It’s my wall to break, prostitute,” Zehrunisa shouts back. The fight quickly begins to escalate between the two women. Fatima, in an effort to completely take down Abdul’s family, lights herself on fire. She is badly burned and survived long enough to tell the police a made-up story that leaves Abdul accused of murder. From there, Boo begins to tell the story of Abdul’s struggles and the stories of other slum-dwellers like Asha, a self-driven woman who is eager to have a better life. Boo precisely highlights the struggles and catastrophe that is the Indian justice system by documenting Abdul’s story and the struggles of the people around him.
This is the first novel for Katherine Boo. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting from disadvantaged communities has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. She divides her time between the United States and India, the birthplace of her husband, Sunil Khilnani.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life,Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo is available for purchase via amazon with ISBN 081297932X. It was originally published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This review refers to the April 2014 reprint edition.
Boo, a journalist for The New Yorker.
Boo chose to cover a section of Indian society that is largely ignored using her documentarian style to showcase the wide-range of human emotions and stories that she uncovered while staying in the Annawadi slum.
3,000 people crammed into 335 huts on a half of acre of land just outside of the Mumbai International Airport, the Annawadi slum serves as the main focus for Boo’s novel. Within the slum, Boo documents the life and struggles of many of the slum’s residents including Zehrunisa and her eldest son, Abdul. In 2008, the main job that most Annawadi children aspired for is scavenging and selling trash.
Abdul, forever being the realist makes a career out of this. He becomes an expert in garbage collecting and trading. “It was a fine time to be a garbage trader, not that that was the term passersby used for Abdul,” Ms. Boo writes. “Some called him garbage, and left it at that.”
However, not all of Abdul’s family shares his realism. His brother longs for a hotel job, a “clean job” as Ms. Boo describes and Abdul’s sister longs to redo the kitchen wall of their hut using the yellow tiles from the concrete wall that hides their slum from the view of the rest of the city. It is this desire that sets into motion the destruction of the family. The wall is shared by two families, on the other side of the wall lives a onelegged prostitute named Fatima.
As the wall is being worked on one day, Fatima is overcome with anger. “There is rubble in my rice!” she shouts. “It’s my wall to break, prostitute,” Zehrunisa shouts back. The fight quickly begins to escalate between the two women. Fatima, in an effort to completely take down Abdul’s family, lights herself on fire. She is badly burned and survived long enough to tell the police a made-up story that leaves Abdul accused of murder. From there, Boo begins to tell the story of Abdul’s struggles and the stories of other slum-dwellers like Asha, a self-driven woman who is eager to have a better life. Boo precisely highlights the struggles and catastrophe that is the Indian justice system by documenting Abdul’s story and the struggles of the people around him.
This is the first novel for Katherine Boo. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting from disadvantaged communities has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. She divides her time between the United States and India, the birthplace of her husband, Sunil Khilnani.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life,Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo is available for purchase via amazon with ISBN 081297932X. It was originally published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This review refers to the April 2014 reprint edition.
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