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‘A small masterpiece - a sassy, sensitive and deeply moving account of one bar girl’s journey spiralling down through the circles of hell that is Bombay’s sex industry.’ William Dalrymple, author of Nine Lives
Sonia Faleiro was a reporter in search of a story when she met Leela, a beautiful and charismatic bar dancer with a story to tell. Leela introduced Sonia to the underworld of Bombay’s dance bars: a world of glamorous women, of fierce love, sex and violence, of customers and gangsters, of police, prostitutes and pimps.
When an ambitious political politician cashed in on a tide of false morality and had Bombay’s dance bars wiped out, Leela’s proud independence faced its greatest test. In a city where almost everyone is certain that someone, somewhere, is worse off than them, she fights to survive, and to win.
Beautiful Thing is a vivid and intimate portrait of one reporter’s journey into the dark, pulsating and ultimately damaged soul of Bombay.
“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.”
sunday Times
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“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.”
observer
“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].”
literary Review
“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.”
spectator
“In this tour de force of heartrending reportage, Sonia Faleiro shows the ugly brutality which has torn away the foundations of so many lives”
independent
Sonia Faleiro
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.