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.

作者简介

凯瑟琳·布(Katherine Boo)

《纽约客杂志》的专职作家。曾任《华盛顿邮报》的记者和编辑，过去二十年都在报导贫困地区、思索社会资源不对等，个人如何摆脱贫困等议题。历年来，她对于底层社会真实生活的报导，为她赢得了麦克阿瑟天才奖、普利策奖、美国国家杂志奖之专题写作奖等殊荣。

译者简介

何佩桦

美国纽约哥伦比亚大学教育学院硕士，曾任大学教师，现旅居北美，专事翻译。译有《伊斯坦布尔：一座城市的记忆》《另类的出口》《西班牙星光之路》《游牧女之歌》《慢船到中国》《夜航西飞》等书。