Download Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity AudioBook Free
National Book Prize, Nonfiction, 2012 Annawadi is a makeshift arrangement in the darkness of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, so that India starts off 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 dispose of. Asha, a female of formidable wit and profound marks from a youth in rural poverty, has identified an alternate path to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful princess - Annawadi's "most-everything lady" - will soon become its first feminine college graduate. And in many cases the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a 15-year-old scrap-metal thief, consider themselves inching closer to the nice lives and memories they call "the full enjoy". But Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the town; and suppressed tensions over religious beliefs, caste, sex, electric power, and economic envy convert brutal. As the tenderest specific desires intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive era are revealed. Therefore, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.
