Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers PDF Author: Katherine Boo
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679643958
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY “Inspiring . . . extraordinary . . . [Katherine Boo] shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.”—People “A tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.”—Judges, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • USA Today • New York • The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • Newsday In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget. WINNER OF: The PEN Nonfiction Award • The Los Angeles Times Book Prize • The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award • The New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • People • Entertainment Weekly • The Wall Street Journal • The Boston Globe • The Economist • Financial Times • Foreign Policy • The Seattle Times • The Nation • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Denver Post • Minneapolis Star Tribune • The Week • Kansas City Star • Slate • Publishers Weekly

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers PDF Author: Katherine Boo
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679643958
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY “Inspiring . . . extraordinary . . . [Katherine Boo] shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.”—People “A tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.”—Judges, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • USA Today • New York • The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • Newsday In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget. WINNER OF: The PEN Nonfiction Award • The Los Angeles Times Book Prize • The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award • The New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • People • Entertainment Weekly • The Wall Street Journal • The Boston Globe • The Economist • Financial Times • Foreign Policy • The Seattle Times • The Nation • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Denver Post • Minneapolis Star Tribune • The Week • Kansas City Star • Slate • Publishers Weekly

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers PDF Author: David Hare
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374714096
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
A stage adaptation of Katherine Boo's National Book Award-winning study of life in a Mumbai slum India is surging with global ambition. But beyond the luxury hotels surrounding Mumbai airport lies a makeshift slum, Annawadi, full of people with plans of their own. Zehrunisa and her son Abdul aim to recycle enough rubbish to fund a proper house. Sunil, twelve and stunted, wants to eat until he's as tall as Kalu the thief. Asha seeks to steal government antipoverty funds to turn herself into a "first-class person," while her daughter Manju intends to become the slum's first female graduate. But their schemes are fragile; global recession threatens the garbage trade, and another slum dweller is about to make an accusation that will destroy herself and shatter the neighborhood. For Behind the Beautiful Forevers, journalist Katherine Boo spent three years in Annawadi recording the lives of its residents. From her uncompromising book, David Hare has fashioned a tumultuous play on an epic scale.

A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi

A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi PDF Author: Aman Sethi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039308972X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
"A deeply moving, funny, and brilliantly written account from one of India’s most original new voices." —Katherine Boo Like Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun and Alexander Masters’s Stuart, this is a tour de force of narrative reportage. Mohammed Ashraf studied biology, became a butcher, a tailor, and an electrician’s apprentice; now he is a homeless day laborer in the heart of old Delhi. How did he end up this way? In an astonishing debut, Aman Sethi brings him and his indelible group of friends to life through their adventures and misfortunes in the Old Delhi Railway Station, the harrowing wards of a tuberculosis hospital, an illegal bar made of cardboard and plywood, and into Beggars Court and back onto the streets. In a time of global economic strain, this is an unforgettable evocation of persistence in the face of poverty in one of the world’s largest cities. Sethi recounts Ashraf’s surprising life story with wit, candor, and verve, and A Free Man becomes a moving story of the many ways a man can be free.

The Death of Vishnu

The Death of Vishnu PDF Author: Manil Suri
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408833255
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
An enthralling virtuoso debut that eloquently captures the loves and losses of a dying man 'All the elements of great storytelling are here, the mystic transports of Ben Okri with the intimate charm of Arundhati Roy ... enchanting' Sunday Tribune 'Beautifully captures with great tenderness and depth the eternal war between duty and desire. This is a love letter to Bombay and its people' Sunday Express Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Bombay apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing. Around him the lives of the apartment dwellers unfold - the warring housewives on the first floor, the lovesick teenagers on the second, and the widower, alone and quietly grieving at the top of the building. In a fevered state Vishnu looks back on his love affair with the seductive Padmini and comedy becomes tragedy as his life draws to a close.

The Beautiful Struggle (Adapted for Young Adults)

The Beautiful Struggle (Adapted for Young Adults) PDF Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher: Ember
ISBN: 1984894056
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Adapted from the adult memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me, this father-son story explores how boys become men, and quite specifically, how Ta-Nehisi Coates became Ta-Nehisi Coates. As a child, Ta-Nehisi Coates was seen by his father, Paul, as too sensitive and lacking focus. Paul Coates was a Vietnam vet who'd been part of the Black Panthers and was dedicated to reading and publishing the history of African civilization. When it came to his sons, he was committed to raising proud Black men equipped to deal with a racist society, during a turbulent period in the collapsing city of Baltimore where they lived. Coates details with candor the challenges of dealing with his tough-love father, the influence of his mother, and the dynamics of his extended family, including his brother "Big Bill," who was on a very different path than Ta-Nehisi. Coates also tells of his family struggles at school and with girls, making this a timely story to which many readers will relate.

Maximum City

Maximum City PDF Author: Suketu Mehta
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307574318
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs, following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse, opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood, and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks. As each individual story unfolds, Mehta also recounts his own efforts to make a home in Bombay after more than twenty years abroad. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world.

The Late Interiors

The Late Interiors PDF Author: Marjorie Sandor
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628721146
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
At a time in her life when she once thought a person should have been well settled in for the long haul, Sandor and her new beloved set out to being a new life together. They buy an old house on the border between the large university, which employs them both, and a small urban/student “wilderness.” Sandor’s young daughter, Hannah, divides her time between her father and her mother’s new home. Almost immediately, Sandor’s partner, Tracy, undergoes sudden heart surgery. He survives, but as they marvel at the fragility of their new life together, they discover that a developer, the Archdiocese of Portland, is planning a multi-story student apartment complex just behind their small, nascent back garden, where a small cluster of Arts and Crafts cottages stands. The development threatens the newfound haven they hope to make for themselves and Sandor’s daughter. The Late Interiors tells the story of five seasons of change and renewal in a woman’s life, braiding entries from a garden journal with lyric meditations and full-blown essays on our eternal—and contradictory—hunger for adventure and refuge. Making a life in art, finding domestic harmony in a new partnership, discovering how a neighborhood comes together to take on seemingly unbeatable developers, and learning how to move forward through hardship and fear to embrace life in its fullest are the enduring themes of this witty and beautifully crafted memoir.

Strength in What Remains

Strength in What Remains PDF Author: Tracy Kidder
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812977610
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle •Chicago Tribune • The Christian Science Monitor • Publishers Weekly In Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder gives us the story of one man’s inspiring American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him, providing brilliant testament to the power of second chances. Deo arrives in the United States from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life and shows us what it means to be fully human. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Named one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the year by Time • Named one of the year’s “10 Terrific Reads” by O: The Oprah Magazine “Extraordinarily stirring . . . a miracle of human courage.”—The Washington Post “Absorbing . . . a story about survival, about perseverance and sometimes uncanny luck in the face of hell on earth. . . . It is just as notably about profound human kindness.”—The New York Times “Important and beautiful . . . This book is one you won’t forget.”—Portland Oregonian

Random Family

Random Family PDF Author: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439124892
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Set amid the havoc of the War on Drugs, this New York Times bestseller is an "astonishingly intimate" (New York magazine) chronicle of one family’s triumphs and trials in the South Bronx of the 1990s. “Unmatched in depth and power and grace. A profound, achingly beautiful work of narrative nonfiction…The standard-bearer of embedded reportage.” —Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted In her classic bestseller, journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the world of one family with roots in the Bronx, New York. In 1989, LeBlanc approached Jessica, a young mother whose encounter with the carceral state is about to forever change the direction of her life. This meeting redirected LeBlanc’s reporting, taking her past the perennial stories of crime and violence into the community of women and children who bear the brunt of the insidious violence of poverty. Her book bears witness to the teetering highs and devastating lows in the daily lives of Jessica, her family, and her expanding circle of friends. Set at the height of the War on Drugs, Random Family is a love story—an ode to the families that form us and the families we create for ourselves. Charting the tumultuous struggle of hope against deprivation over three generations, LeBlanc slips behind the statistics and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and distinctly American true story.

The Heart Is a Shifting Sea

The Heart Is a Shifting Sea PDF Author: Elizabeth Flock
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062456504
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Winner of the Silver Nautilus Award for Journalism & Investigative Reporting "Elizabeth Flock takes us on an intimate cruise on the shifting sea of the heart, in the best book set in Bombay that I've read in years. Flock's total access to her characters, and her highly sympathetic and nonjudgmental gaze, prove that love and literature know no borders. Easily the most intimate account of India that I've read, and of value to anybody that believes in love and marriage."—Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City "This remarkable debut is so deeply reported, elegantly written, and profoundly transporting that it reads like a novel you can’t put down. It’s both a nuanced and intimate evocation of Indian culture, and a provocative and exciting meditation on marriage itself."—Katie Roiphe, author of The Violet Hour In the vein of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an intimate, deeply reported and revelatory examination of love, marriage, and the state of modern India—as witnessed through the lives of three very different couples in today’s Mumbai. In twenty-first-century India, tradition is colliding with Western culture, a clash that touches the lives of everyday Indians from the wealthiest to the poorest. While ethnicity, class, and religion are influencing the nation’s development, so too are pop culture and technology—an uneasy fusion whose impact is most evident in the institution of marriage. The Heart Is a Shifting Sea introduces three couples whose relationships illuminate these sweeping cultural shifts in dramatic ways: Veer and Maya, a forward-thinking professional couple whose union is tested by Maya’s desire for independence; Shahzad and Sabeena, whose desperation for a child becomes entwined with the changing face of Islam; and Ashok and Parvati, whose arranged marriage, made possible by an online matchmaker, blossoms into true love. Though these three middle-class couples are at different stages in their lives and come from diverse religious backgrounds, their stories build on one another to present a layered, nuanced, and fascinating mosaic of the universal challenges, possibilities, and promise of matrimony in its present state. Elizabeth Flock has observed the evolving state of India from inside Mumbai, its largest metropolis. She spent close to a decade getting to know these couples—listening to their stories and living in their homes, where she was privy to countless moments of marital joy, inevitable frustration, dramatic upheaval, and whispered confessions and secrets. The result is a phenomenal feat of reportage that is both an enthralling portrait of a nation in the midst of transition and an unforgettable look at the universal mysteries of love and marriage that connect us all.