Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity Audiobook

Quotes

• “Extraordinary…Moving…Like the best journeys, Boo’s book cracks open our preconceptions and constructs an abiding bridge—at once daunting and inspiring—to a world we would never otherwise recognize as our own.”

  — National Geographic Traveler

• “Behind the Beautiful Forevers offers a rebuke to official reports and dry statistics on the global poor…Boo is one of few chroniclers providing this picture. She’s a moral force and…an artist of reverberating power.”

  — American Prospect

• “Seamless and intimate…A scrupulously true story…It’s tempting to compare [Behind the Beautiful Forevers] to a novel, but…that would hardly do it justice.”

• “The most riveting Indian story since Slumdog Millionaire—except hers is true.”

  — Marie Claire

• “An unforgettable true story, meticulously researched with unblinking honesty…Pure, astonishing reportage with as unbiased a lens as possible.”

  — Christian Science Monitor

• “A mind-blowing read.”

  — Redbook

• “Moving…A humane, powerful, and insightful book…A book of nonfiction so stellar it puts most novels to shame.”

  — Boston Globe

• “Gripping…A brilliant novelistic narration.”

  — Wall Street Journal

• “A shocking—and riveting—portrait of life in modern India…This is one stunning piece of narrative nonfiction…Boo’s prose is electric.”

  — O, The Oprah Magazine

• “A tough-minded, inspiring, and irresistible book…Boo’s extraordinary achievement is twofold. She shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as importantly, she makes us care.”

  — People (starred review)

• “Riveting, fearlessly reported…[Beautiful Forevers] plays out like a swift, richly plotted novel. That’s partly because Boo writes so damn well. But it’s also because over the course of three years in India she got extraordinary access to the lives and minds of the Annawadi slum, a settlement nestled jarringly close to a shiny international airport and a row of luxury hotels.”

  — Entertainment Weekly

• “A jaw-dropping achievement, an instant classic of narrative nonfiction…With a cinematic intensity…Boo transcends and subverts every cliché, cynical or earnest, that we harbor about Indian destitution and gazes directly into the hearts, hopes, and human promise of vibrant people whom you’ll not soon forget.”

  — Elle

• “Boo creates an intimate, unforgettable portrait of India’s urban poor…The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “This is an astonishing book…on several levels: as a worm’s-eye view of the ‘undercity’ of one of the world’s largest metropolises; as an intensely reported, deeply felt account of the lives, hopes, and fears of people traditionally excluded from literate narratives; as a story that truly hasn’t been told before, at least not about India and not by a foreigner…[Behind the Beautiful Forevers] is a searing account, in effective and racy prose, that reads like a thrilling novel but packs a punch Sinclair Lewis might have envied.”

  — Washington Post

• “[An] exquisitely accomplished first book. Novelists dream of defining characters this swiftly and beautifully, but Ms. Boo is not a novelist. She is one of those rare, deep-digging journalists who can make truth surpass fiction, a documentarian with a superb sense of human drama. She makes it very easy to forget that this book is the work of a reporter…Comparison to Dickens is not unwarranted.”

  — New York Times