Skip to footer

'Behind the Beautiful Forevers' will become a London stage play

'Behind the Beautiful Forevers' by Katherine Boo won the 2012 nonfiction National Book Award and received almost universal critical praise.

'Behind the Beautiful Forevers' follows the residents of a slum in India.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Critically acclaimed nonfiction book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo is set to become a stage play via the National Theater in London in 2014.

"Behind the Beautiful Forevers'' focuses on the residents of a slum known as Annawadi located near the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo, a former Washington Post correspondent who is a staff writer for the New Yorker, spent more than three years in the area in order to write her book.

The stage production of the book will be directed by Rufus Norris, who works as one of the associate directors at the National Theater. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" will be adapted for the stage by David Hare, a playwright behind works such as 2011 play “South Downs,” and the screenplays for both the 2008 movie “The Reader” starring Kate Winslet, and the 2002 movie “The Hours,” for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

"Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is currently scheduled to be part of the National Theater’s fall season in 2014.

The book won the National Book Award in nonfiction for 2012 and was featured on many of last year's "top ten" and "best-of-the-year" lists.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers' will become a London stage play
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0517/Behind-the-Beautiful-Forevers-will-become-a-London-stage-play
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe