An engrossing and enlightening book came to my attention a while back. It was written by Katherine Boo, a longtime New Yorker writer whose prose is elegant and artful.
Honored by a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize, Boo had her book published in 2012. I cannot recommend too highly Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity.
I have to say its ring of authenticity is a clarion invitation to understanding and empathizing with the poorest of the poor. So compelling are the book’s descriptions that I felt as though I could smell the smells of a slum, taste the bitterness of injustice and feel the pain of deprivation on which Boo trains her attention.
Stupid me, either when I ordered Behind the Beautiful Forevers or got down my list of reading material, I forgot a key fact about the book until I arrived at Boo’s author’s note at the end. Continue reading
I, on Cambodia 