Reads like a novel. I'm not altogether sure that's a good thing. But I don't think I'll forget these people.
Reserved for the Passport to the World bookbox.

From the publisher's description:
"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."


http://www.behindthebeautifulforevers.com/

Thank you so much for putting this into the Passport vbb on BookObsessed. I've wanted to read this when it came out. My bookclub did select it to read a few months back, but it was a new book so the waiting list at the library was like 200 long. So, really glad I finally get hold of a copy.
Thank you!

Beautifully written, and a very in depth look at the lives of a slum.

I totally agree that it reads like a novel and that I'm not sure it's a good thing. I have to keep reminding myself that the characters are real people, that someone really set herself on fire, that someone really went to jail, that someone really lost a life. I went to the official site, and there were very few photos and videos, and none with name. It's a shame not to be able to put faces to the names, but maybe the author intends it that way. That there are numerous people living such lives, and that it's not the story of a few but millions.

This is now going to a birthday girl who has this on her wishlist. Happy Birthday and enjoy the book!!

Really excited to read this one. It's going to the top of Mt. TBR.

Boo does a remarkable thing -- she gets close enough to the lives of these people to be able to write their stories as complete, deep, emotional individuals without inserting too much of herself into the story. This book could so easily have taken the unfortunate turn of so many similar efforts and been half-memoir of her research and half story of her subjects. What Boo does here is much more difficult and much more impressive.

I haven't read anything else that gives such a clear perspective on the day to day lives of the slum-dwellers living on the edges of society.

Highly recommended.

I'm placing this in a Little Free Library in Columbia Missouri.