Power Politics - Softcover

Roy, Arundhati

4.11

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 0896086569 ISBN 13: 9780896086562

Publisher: South End Press, 2000

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Arundhati Roy, the internationally acclaimed author of The God of Small Things, explores the politics of writing and the human and environmental price of "development" in her latest work, Power Politics. In a clear and compelling voice, Roy challenges the idea that only "experts" can speak out on such urgent matters as nuclear war, the tolls of privatization of India's power supply by U.S.-based energy companies, and the construction of monumental dams in India, which promises the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people.

Roy describes the challenges she has faced in speaking out on contemporary politics after the tremendous international success of her novel The God of Small Things, winner of the prestigious Booker Prize. Here, Roy updates The Cost of Living, described by Salman Rushdie as "brilliant reportage with a passionate, no-holds-barred commentary." In Power Politics, she takes us to the frontlines of struggle for social justice and a humane, democratic future in India.

In this latest work, Roy writes of "the politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction...in the present circumstances, I'd say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent."

Born in 1961 in Bengal, Arundhati Roy grew up in Kerala and trained as an architect at the Delhi School of Architecture. Writing in the New York Times, John Updike observed, "The quality of Ms. Roy's narration is so extraordinary-at once so morally strenuous and so imaginatively supple-that the reader remains enthralled all the way through." She is the author of The God of Small Things (HarperCollins) and The Cost of Living (Modern Library).

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About the Author:

Arundhati Roy wowed critics with her writing debut, The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1998. She has also published several collections of essays The Cost of Living, Power Politics and most recently War Talk. Ms. Roy is an outspoken critic of India's nuclear weapons testing, controversial environmental issues and the US "war on terrorism".

From Publishers Weekly:

This second nonfiction book from the author of the acclaimed novel The God of Small Things returns to the subject she first explored in The Cost of Living: what she sees as the iniquity of globalization and the dangers of privatization, particularly in dam construction. In this slim yet meandering volume of three essays, Roy also criticizes an American energy company and the Indian government for allowing big business to make money privatizing electricity in a country where hundreds of millions lack any electricity. Roy's activism against the construction of dams that displace hundreds of thousands, especially the poor and low-caste, earned her a contempt of court citation from India's Supreme Court. She includes here her response, "On the Writer's Freedom of Imagination," but little context or explanation is given to help readers situate it. Likewise, Roy's other two short essays, ostensibly about the role of the writer (or "writer-activist," as she puts it) in society, criticize development, trade and global finance. Although her passion and agitation on these issues is commendable, her writing lacks analysis, and her generalized outrage and hyperbole make much of her criticism wooden. She tends to switch between issues of trade and her fame, losing the reader. The three pieces seem thrown together haphazardly, with no editorial explanation of how they originated (all are available on the Web) or in what context.

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