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.

Auteur

Sonia Faleiro is an award-winning reporter and the author of a book of fiction, The Girl (Viking, 2006). Beautiful Thing is her first full-length work of non-fiction and is based on five years of research in Bombay's dance bars. Sonia was born in Goa, India; studied in Edinburgh, worked in Bombay, and lives in San Francisco. Please visit www.soniafaleiro.com