Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum by Katherine Boo; India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation by Oliver Balch; Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast by Samanth Subramanian - review by John Keay

John Keay

Shine & Squalor

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum

By

Portobello Books 254pp £14.99

India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation

By

Faber & Faber 327pp £14.99

Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast

By

Atlantic Books 209pp £12.99
 

These three books just about sum up modern India: nauseating in its indifference to social deprivation, tiresome in its obsession with globalised modernity, and utterly charming when least expected. The works of three journalists, one American, one English and one Indian, all of these books have merit; none disappoints and one positively delights.

Katherine Boo, a socially conscientious staffer at the New Yorker who is married to the Indian political historian Sunil Khilnani, elected to explore how the urban poor of her husband’s homeland are being affected by their experience of ‘juxtaposed inequality’ and the ‘infrastructure of opportunity’. She approached the subject cautiously,

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter