{"product_id":"beautiful-and-the-damned","title":"Beautiful and the Damned","description":"\u003cp\u003eSiddhartha Deb grew up in a remote town in the northeastern hills of India and made his way to the United States via a fellowship at Columbia. Six years after leaving home, he returned as an undercover reporter for \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e, working at a call center in Delhi in 2004, a time when globalization was fast proceeding and Thomas L. Friedman declared the world flat. Deb's experience interviewing the call-center staff led him to undertake this book and travel throughout the subcontinent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Beautiful and the Damned \u003c\/i\u003eexamines India's many contradictions through various individual and extraordinary perspectives. With lyrical and commanding prose, Deb introduces the reader to an unforgettable group of Indians, including a Gatsby-like mogul in Delhi whose hobby is producing big-budget gangster films that no one sees; a wiry, dusty farmer named Gopeti whose village is plagued by suicides and was the epicenter of a riot; and a sad-eyed waitress named Esther who has set aside her dual degrees in biochemistry and botany to serve Coca-Cola to arms dealers at an upscale hotel called Shangri La.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike no other writer, Deb humanizes the post-globalization experience--its advantages, failures, and absurdities. India is a country where you take a nap and someone has stolen your job, where you buy a BMW but still have to idle for cows crossing your path. Available for the first time with the controversial and previously unpublished first chapter, \u003ci\u003eThe Beautiful and the Damned \u003c\/i\u003eis as important and incisive today as it was when it was first published.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54221642793304,"sku":"9780141033341","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780141033341_eeb4963b-65b7-47d3-8843-9c7e19be4cf6.jpg?v=1769226333","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/beautiful-and-the-damned","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}