02811cam a2200301 i 4500 424326492 TxAuBib 20120420120000.0 120213s2011||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2011019555 9781400067558 hc 1400067553 hc (OCoLC)693809650 DLC eng DLC BTCTA YDXCP UPZ ZAD TxAuBib rda Boo, Katherine. Behind the beautiful forevers : life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity / Katherine Boo. New York : Random House, 2011. 256 pages ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Prologue: between roses -- Undercitizens -- Annawadi -- Asha -- Sunil -- Manju -- The business of burning -- Ghost house -- A hole she called a window -- A come-apart -- The master -- Market city -- Marquee effect -- Parrots, caught and sold -- Proper sleep -- Up and out -- Nine nights of dance -- Something shining á -- The trial -- Ice -- Black and white -- A school, a hospital, a cricket field. 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 "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter-Annawadis "most-everything girl"-will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy." But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first centurys hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget... from dust jacket. 20120420. Urban poor. Mumbai (India.) India Economic conditions.