<div>A journey into today’s India through essays, photography, and more, shortlisted for a 2022 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award. Since its earliest interactions with the West, India has been the object of a gross misinterpretation, a vague association with ideas of peace, spiritualism, the magic of the fakirs. Constantly reframed and mythologized by Westerners fleeing their supposedly rationalist societies, India continues to fascinate with its millennia-old history, shrines on every street corner, ancient beliefs and rituals, and unique linguistic and cultural diversity. Today this picture is mixed with that of a society changing at a frenetic pace and at the forefront of the digital revolution—a “shining India” of dynamic, fast-expanding megalopolises. Yet these success stories coexist with the daily plight of the large section of its population without access to drinking water or a toilet, with a rural economy (still employing the majority of its over 1.3 billion inhabitants) that depends on monsoons for irrigation and is threatened by climate change. The greatest democratic experiment ever attempted, India remains plagued by one of the vilest forms of class and racial discrimination, the caste system, exacerbated by the Hindu nationalist regime. All things considered, though, it’s hard to find a more dynamic and optimistic country or, as Arundhati Roy puts it, “a more irredeemably chaotic people.” This volume aims to depict India’s chaos and its contradictions, its terror and its joy, from the struggle of the Kashmiris to that of non-believers (hated by all religious sects), from the dances of the hijra in Koovagam to the success of the wrestler Vinesh Phogat, a symbol of the women who seek to free themselves from the oppressive patriarchal mores. Despite the obstacles and steps back, India continues its journey on the long path toward freedom and toward ending poverty for some of the world’s most destitute. Included are writings on: Caste: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow by Arundhati Roy · The Invention of Hindu Nationalism by Prem Shankar Jha · No Country for Women by Tishani Doshi · Plus: the grand ambitions of the world’s most underrated space program, Bollywood’s obsession with Swiss landscapes, an ode to Bengali food, eagerly awaiting the monsoon, the wrestler tackling stereotypes and much more . . . “These books are so rich and engrossing that it is rewarding to read them even when one is stuck at home.” —The Times Literary Supplement</div>

The Passenger: India

<div>An activist and an actor reflect on Edward Snowden and the surveillance state in this collection that &ldquo;reads like a whistleblower&rsquo;s travel diary&rdquo; (Disorient). In late 2014, Arundhati Roy, John Cusack, and Daniel Ellsberg traveled to Moscow to meet with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The result was a series of essays and dialogues in which Roy and Cusack reflect on their conversations with Snowden. In these provocative and penetrating discussions, Roy and Cusack discuss the nature of the state, empire, and surveillance in an era of perpetual war, the meaning of flags and patriotism, the role of foundations and NGOs in limiting dissent, and the ways in which capital &mdash;but not people&mdash;can freely cross borders. &ldquo;Things That Can and Cannot Be Said is not a book with solutions, nor even a comprehensive framing of the problem. Its charm and potential lies in its disarming conversational approach, offering insights-in-passing; ideas and thoughts to spark further conversations and just maybe inspire other acts of moral courage. While the book channels a palpable sense of rage&mdash;rage at imperialism, at the surveillance state, at &lsquo;Washington&rsquo;s ability to destroy countries and its inability to win a war&rsquo;&mdash;it concludes on the topic of love.&rdquo; &mdash;PopMatters &ldquo;It asks questions&mdash;a lot of them. It connects dots from Kashmir to Palestine to Vietnam to Virginia&mdash;leaving no one spared from scrutiny&ndash;&ndash;not even themselves, as Arundhati asserts.&rdquo; &mdash;Disorient &ldquo;The freewheeling conversations between all the participants will bring up many Eureka moments for a lot of readers. Insights that can only be gained if you are researching these topics in exhausting detail.&rdquo; &mdash;Firstpost</div>

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Things That Can and Cannot Be Said

<div>The &ldquo;courageous and clarion&rdquo; Booker Prize&ndash;winner &ldquo;continues her analysis and documentation of the disastrous consequences of unchecked global capitalism&rdquo; (Booklist). From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country&rsquo;s one hundred richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India&rsquo;s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism have subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation. &ldquo;A highly readable and characteristically trenchant mapping of early-twenty-first-century India&rsquo;s impassioned love affair with money, technology, weaponry and the &lsquo;privatization of everything,&rsquo; and&mdash;because these must not be impeded no matter what&mdash;generous doses of state violence.&rdquo; &mdash;The Nation &ldquo;A vehement broadside against capitalism in general and American cultural imperialism in particular . . . an impassioned manifesto.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews &ldquo;Roy&rsquo;s central concern is the effect on her own country, and she shows how Indian politics have taken on the same model, leading to the ghosts of her book&rsquo;s title: 250,000 farmers have committed suicide, 800 million impoverished and dispossessed Indians, environmental destruction, colonial-like rule in Kashmir, and brutal treatment of activists and journalists. In this dark tale, Roy gives rays of hope that illuminate cracks in the nightmare she evokes.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

Capitalism

<div>Five books of essays in one volume from the Booker Prize&ndash;winner and &ldquo;one of the most ambitious and divisive political essayists of her generation&rdquo; (The Washington Post). With a new introduction by Arundhati Roy, this new collection begins with her pathbreaking book The Cost of Living&mdash;published soon after she won the Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things&mdash;in which she forcefully condemned India&rsquo;s nuclear tests and its construction of enormous dam projects that continue to displace countless people from their homes and communities. The End of Imagination also includes her nonfiction works Power Politics, War Talk, Public Power in the Age of Empire, and An Ordinary Person&rsquo;s Guide to Empire, which include her widely circulated and inspiring writings on the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the need to confront corporate power, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions globally. Praise for Arundhati Roy &ldquo;The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.&rdquo; &mdash;Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning author and recipient of the LennonOno Grant for Peace Award &ldquo;Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays.&rdquo; &mdash;Howard Zinn, author of Political Awakenings and Indispensable Zinn &ldquo;Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness. And in these extraordinary essays&mdash;which are clarions for justice, for witness, for a true humanity&mdash;Roy is at her absolute best.&rdquo; &mdash;Junot D&iacute;az, author of the Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao &ldquo;One of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.&rdquo; &mdash;Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and The Battle For Paradise &ldquo;Arundhati Roy calls for &lsquo;factual precision&rsquo; alongside of the &lsquo;real precision of poetry.&rsquo; Remarkably, she combines those achievements to a degree that few can hope to approach.&rdquo; &mdash;Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects &ldquo;India&rsquo;s most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times</div>

The End of Imagination

<div>In &ldquo;gorgeously wrought&rdquo; essays, the New York Times-bestselling author of The God of Small Things takes a critical look at India&rsquo;s political climate (Time Magazine). These &ldquo;powerful&rdquo; essays (Kirkus Reviews) examine the dark side of contemporary India, looking closely at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism, and neo-fascism simmer just under the surface of a country that projects itself as the world&rsquo;s largest democracy. Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy writes about how the combination of Hindu nationalism and India&rsquo;s neo-liberal economic reforms, which began their journey together in the early 1990s, are turning India into a police state. She describes the systematic marginalization of religious and ethnic minorities, the rise of terrorism, and the massive scale of displacement and dispossession of the poor by predatory corporations. She also offers a brilliant account of the August 2008 uprising of the people of Kashmir against India&#39;s military occupation and an analysis of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai. Field Notes on Democracy tracks the fault-lines that threaten to destroy India&#39;s precarious democracy and send shockwaves through the region and beyond. &ldquo;Genocide, denial, and truth-as-a-victim are just a few of the big subjects dealt with by Booker prize-winning Indian author and activist Roy . . . [a] vivid inside look at India&#39;s turbulent growth.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly (starred review) &ldquo;Takes aim at India&#39;s self-image&mdash;and reputation&mdash;as the world&rsquo;s largest and most vibrant democracy.&rdquo; &mdash;The Washington Post &ldquo;After so much celebratory salesmanship about India the &lsquo;emerging market,&rsquo; Roy draws us into India the actual country . . . one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.&rdquo; &mdash;Naomi Klein, New York Times-bestselling author of No is Not Enough</div>

Field Notes on Democracy

<div>The little-known story of Gandhi&rsquo;s reluctance to challenge the caste system, and the man who fought fiercely for India&rsquo;s downtrodden. Democracy hasn&rsquo;t eradicated caste, argues bestselling author and Booker Prize&ndash;winner Arundhati Roy&mdash;it has entrenched and modernized it. To understand caste today in India, Roy insists we must examine the influence of Gandhi in shaping what India ultimately became: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system. Roy states that for more than a half century, Gandhi&rsquo;s pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, Dalit &ldquo;untouchables,&rdquo; and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting, and he also refused to allow lower castes to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives. But there was someone else who had a larger vision of justice&mdash;a founding father of the republic and the chief architect of its constitution. In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy introduces us to this contemporary of Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, who challenged the thinking of the time and fought to promote not merely formal democracy, but liberation from the oppression, shame, and poverty imposed on millions of Indians by an archaic caste system. This is a fascinating and surprising look at two men&mdash;one of whom has become a worldwide symbol and the other of whom remains unfamiliar to most outside his native country. Praise for Arundhati Roy &ldquo;Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness.&rdquo; &mdash;Junot D&iacute;az &ldquo;The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.&rdquo; &mdash;Alice Walker</div>

The Doctor and the Saint

<div>Two decades of commentary by the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author: &ldquo;An electrifying political essayist . . . uplifting . . . galvanizing.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist From the Booker Prize-winning author of such works as The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, My Seditious Heart collects nonfiction spanning over twenty years and chronicles a battle for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile world. Taken together, these essays are told in a voice of unique spirit, marked by compassion, clarity, and courage. Radical and superbly readable, they speak always in defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites. &ldquo;Her lucid and probing essays offer sharp insights on a range of matters, from crony capitalism and environmental depredation to the perils of nationalism and, in her most recent work, the insidiousness of the Hindu caste system. In an age of intellectual logrolling and mass-manufactured infotainment, she continues to offer bracing ways of seeing, thinking and feeling.&rdquo; &mdash;Pankaj Mishra, Time Magazine Praise for Arundhati Roy: &ldquo;Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays.&rdquo; &mdash;Howard Zinn &ldquo;One of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.&rdquo; &mdash;Naomi Klein &ldquo;The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Book Review</div>

Arundhati Roy
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Books By Arundhati Roy (6 Books)

Things That Can and Cannot Be Said

Capitalism

The End of Imagination

Field Notes on Democracy

The Doctor and the Saint

My Seditious Heart

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© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Arundhati RoyFollow this author

Books By Arundhati Roy (6 Books)

Things That Can and Cannot Be Said

Capitalism

The End of Imagination

Field Notes on Democracy

The Doctor and the Saint

My Seditious Heart

RELATED POSTS ABOUT ARUNDHATI ROY

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More from

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© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Arundhati Roy
Follow this author