Hope is not fiction

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an extraordinary non-fiction book, is the result of investigative journalism by Katherine Boo over five years in Mumbai, India, starting in 2007. It has received major recognition including the National Book Award (2012) in the United States. Critical reviewers in India have also acclaimed it.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers is Boo’s first book. She is an American journalist from Washington, DC, who graduated from Barnard College and returned to DC to work for a number of newspapers, including the Washington Post for a decade until 2003. In 2000 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on the problems of mentally impaired people. They credited her with disclosing ‘wretched neglect and abuse in the city’s group homes for the mentally retarded, which forced officials to acknowledge the conditions and begin reforms’.