Beautiful Thing

Meet Leela: nineteen, charismatic and fearlessly outspoken. With her sharp wit and stubborn optimism, she is the best paid bar dancer on Bombay's notorious Mira Road. Leela has a 'husband' (who is already married), a few lovers whose names she can't remember, an insufferable mother camping out in her flat and an adored best friend, Priya - the most beautiful woman she has ever seen. But when the dance bars are banned, Leela's proud independence faces its greatest test. In a city where everyone is certain that someone, somewhere, is worse off than them, Leela fights to survive - and win.

A harrowing and heart-breaking account . . . a tour de force of reportage, whose depth, insight and resonance make it the equal of the best fiction. [Faleiro] has portrayed the tragedy of this world without a shred of sentimentality. In this she has done justice to her characters for whom sentimentality - like romance, love and honesty - are luxuries they can rarely afford., A riveting exposé ... For a book that's so short, Faleiro manages to pack a lot in: pimps, gangsters, transvestites, cops and madams. But its most outstanding quality to my eye is the window it offers on the widespread sexual repression that exists in India today, and the murky middle-class morality that rules it ... The real triumph of Beautiful Thing is how Faleiro dismantles the grand tradition of marriage in India, exposing it for what it is - a form of slavery for a large percentage of women who are bound to their husbands for food and the roofs over their heads, but rarely ever for love., A gripping and intimate portrayal of the lives of the women who work in that industry. She manages to evoke shock, rage and laughter...this book is a moving testament to the girls like [Leela]., Useless to describe the pathos and singular power of this book. Beautiful Thing is, quite simply, one of the finest books on Bombay ever written., In this tour de force of heartrending reportage, Sonia Faleiro shows the ugly brutality which has torn away the foundations of so many lives

Sonia Faleiro is an award-winning reporter and writer. She is the author of a book of fiction, The Girl, and a contributor to numerous anthologies including AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India. She has reported for publications including India Today and Tehelka, and is now a contributing editor with Vogue. Sonia was born in Goa, studied in Edinburgh and lives in San Francisco. She is working on her second book of non-fiction.