Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Katherine Boo spent more than three years in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. She follows Abdul, a teenager who supports his family by sorting and selling the city's garbage, alongside an ambitious mother named Asha and her studious daughter, as they all try to climb out of the slum amid India's economic boom. When a neighbor's self-immolation triggers a false accusation and a court case, Boo traces how poverty, corruption, and a broken justice system close around the people least able to fight back, all rendered without the author ever stepping into the frame.