Why the Poor Don't Kill Us

By: MANU JOSEPH

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

"...the talk of living rooms across the country" - The Economist
"...Droll, folksy irreverence" - Business Standard
“... A scalpel cutting into the membrane that separates the rich from the poor” - The Tribune
"...sharp and suave..." - The Week

Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us
In this searing and darkly hilarious diagnosis of contemporary society, acclaimed Indian writer Manu Joseph explores why the poor don’t rise in revolt against the rich despite living in one of the most unequal regions of the world.
The poor know how much we spend in a single day, on a single meal, the price of Atlantic salmon and avocados. “Why,” he asks, “do they tolerate it? Why don’t they crawl out from their catastrophes and finish us off? Why don’t little men emerge from manholes and attack the cars? Why don’t the maids, who squat like frogs beside kitchen sinks, pull out the hair of their conscientious madams who never give them a day off? Why is there peace?”
Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us lays bare, with pitiless precision, the absurd, obvious and counter-intuitive reasons why we are safe. So far. It is a fragile peace, and we need to understand how it has come to be.
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Manu Joseph is a former columnist for the New York Times. He is also a novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of the novels Serious Men, The Illicit Happiness of Other People, and Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous. He is the winner of the Hindu Literary Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, whose jury described him as ‘…that rare bird who can wildly entertain the reader as forcefully as he moves them’. He has been nominated for several other prizes. He is also the creator of the Netflix series, Decoupled. This is his first “non-fiction”.

Great insights into all economies and India society in particular.

He has a breezy writing style and peppers his observations with facts and humor. I enjoyed the insights in this book immensely. I wish I had read it before I went to India.

Interesting Content, but Virtual Voice is a Bust!

The content of this book is interesting if very much couched in opinion... There is some fact, and definitely some aspects are humorous. But the narration totally threw me... Narration can make or break how a book lands for a listener. While I was impressed with the Virtual Voice's Indian accent, it mispronounces many, many names including names like Jawaharlal and Kerala... I mean, good God - so much of the book mentions these two words. And the weird pauses in the middle of statements - ugh!. Did no one listen to the voice before publishing? Often listeners rely on the pronunciations in books to know how to say things correctly! If you are not familiar with Indian pronunciations, I do not recommend listening to this book at all. You may read it and seek out the correct pronunciations of things you don't know, but please don't be misled and then say these things in a setting where you might be regarded as uneducated. Presumably, you'd be discussing the book with others who are interested in these topics. Sadly, the cost of narration in India is not expensive, and this book could have easily been read by a human with correct pronunciations.

AI has come a long way, not long enough

Some very interesting insight into modern India here, Unfortunately the AI reading was lackluster. Mispronunciations, weird gaps and pauses thoughout. If it was a longer book I would have given up.

At free it cost too much

Thought I might enjoy this but it was truly awful.I have never heard so many things stated as fact with absolutely zero proof to back it up.