Will I love Behind the Beautiful Forevers?

This is an amazing book, gorgeously written, but I love it most because it takes us into a world we would never have access to: the Indian slum, where lives are hard, where the margins are impossibly thin, and where people make their living sorting through the waste of others.

But what Boo shows is that, no matter how hard those lives are, they are every bit as rich and complicated and full of drama as our own.

I first read this book over a decade ago, and it has remained one of my favorites ever since. It is moving and exquisitely written, offering a close view of a community living on the edge of one of India’s biggest cities and exploring what it means to live on the cusp of wealth but mired in poverty.

Mostly, it is deeply human and a real page-turner. I expect this will remain my Holy Grail of writing and storytelling for a long time.

You never know how good you have it, until you see someone who doesn’t have it as good. 

This book takes you inside a Mumbai slum, where you get to experience life as a young boy who earns a living as a trash picker. Humbling and heartbreaking, Abdul’s experience will make you feel grateful for any little bit of everything you have, and it may end up even leaving you transformed.

I absolutely adore this brilliant work of nonfiction by the journalist Katherine Boo. Not only is she a writer’s writer, her powers of observation are only matched by the depth of her compassion for her characters. By spending time with the rag pickers, junk collectors, and other residents who live in a slum located in the shadows of the gleaming new Bombay airport, Boo tells a story about poverty, inequality, police, and political corruption, and the corrosive effects of globalization. The book’s sweep is breathtaking as is its unforgettable portrait of the individual residents and their heartbreaking stories.