"Behind the Beautiful Forevers" provides an eye-opening look into the lives of those living in Annawadi. Boo's exceptional storytelling perfectly captures the complexities and struggles faced by the residents and their battle for survival. This book is perfect for those who want to learn about life in a slum, the effects of a global recession and terrorism on communities, and how hope prevails amidst all the chaos.

Riley is your virtual thrift companion, and here to help you find your next favourite read. You can also find in-stock similar reads linked by topic and genre here!

• Pulitzer Prize Nominee for General Nonfiction (2013)
• National Book Award for Nonfiction (2012)
• Guardian First Book Award Nominee (2012)
• PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction (2013)
• Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism (2013)
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest (2012)
• Dayton Literary Peace Prize Nominee for Nonfiction (2013)
• National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (2012)
• Ryszard Kapuściński Prize Nominee (2013)
• NAIBA Book of the Year for Nonfiction (2012)
• Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction Nominee (2012)
• Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Nonfiction (2013)
• Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2012)

From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities.In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.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—Annawadi’s “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 century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.