
Step into Mumbai's Annawadi slum, where dreams persist amid crushing poverty. This National Book Award winner captivated Bill Gates and became a London stage sensation. Katherine Boo's immersive reporting reveals: can hope survive when corruption and globalization collide in modern India?
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What does it mean to be good when survival itself demands compromise? In Annawadi, a Mumbai slum nestled between luxury hotels and an international airport, three thousand people navigate this impossible question daily. They live behind a wall plastered with advertisements for Italian floor tiles promising "BEAUTIFUL FOREVER"-a cruel irony for families whose homes could vanish with the next monsoon or government bulldozer. This is where Abdul Husain, a sixteen-year-old garbage sorter, has mastered an essential philosophy: keep your head down, trust no one, and never get involved in your neighbors' troubles. He believes the better he knows someone, the more he'll dislike them-a survival strategy born from watching how quickly friendship turns to betrayal when everyone is desperate. His world consists of sorting bottle caps with plastic linings from pure aluminum, earning rupees while dodging corrupt police and sick goats nosing through his recyclables. Yet even Abdul's careful distance cannot protect him from the violence that erupts when proximity and poverty collide.