Arundhati Roy is the author of
The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997 and has been translated into more than forty languages, and
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2017. Roy has also published several works of non-fiction, including
The Algebra of Infinite Justice,
Listening to Grasshoppers and
Broken Republic. She lives in Delhi.
Now with a new introduction by the author discussing the election of India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi.
In eleven powerful, and closely argued, linked essays, Arundhati Roy takes a hard look at the underbelly of the world's largest democracy. Beginning with the state-backed killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, she writes about how 'progress' and genocide have historically gone hand in hand; about the murky investigations into the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament; about the dangers of an increasingly powerful and entirely unaccountable judiciary; and about the collusion between large corporations, the government and the mainstream media. The volume ends with an account of the August 2008 uprising in Kashmir and an analysis of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai. 'The Briefing', included as an appendix, is a compelling fictional text that brings together many of the issues central to the collection.
Gorgeously wrought . . . pitch-perfect prose. . . . In language of terrible beauty, she takes India's everyday tragedies and reminds us to be outraged all over againRoy asks whether our shriveled forms of democracy will be 'the endgame of the human race'-and shows vividly why this is a prospect not to be lightly dismissedRoy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our timeRoy [resists] and denounces all tyrannies, pleads for their victims, and unflinchingly questions the tragic
