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Customer Reviews (20)

A Guide To the New World Order
It's a new world order in which the public infrastructure, productive public assests - water, electricity, transport(roads/freeways), telecommunications(internet), health services, education, natural resources(parks) - assets the American government is supposed to hold in trust for the people it represents, assets that have been built and maintained w/public money for generations - are being sold to private corporations. To steal these away & sell them as stock in private companies is beginning. U.S.A. Pvt. Ltd. is on its way to being owned by a few corporations and major multinational$(allegiance to no country). The CEO$ of theses companies will control the country, its infrastructure and its resource$, its media & its journali$t, but will owe nothing to its people. They are completely unaccountable(Blackwater) - legally, socially, morally, & politically. Soon, democracy will be just theater.
The role of government$ in the New World Order of globalization will be increasingly authoritarian, loyal, & corrupt.

In Russia, they say the past is unpredictable.
The U.S.A. is not far behind.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!!!!!!

Grass roots resistance to globalist corporatism
Arundhati Roy is a social justice advocate with solid non-violence credentials and a lucid view of globalist corporatism. When Ordinary Persons' Guide to Empire (OPGE) came out, it was received as an anti-Bush/Cheney polemic. Given the September 2004 release date (right before mid-term elections) that may be understandable, but it is erroneous. Although much of OPGE does relate to the conflict in Iraq and Bush's "war on terror", trying to force this book into the framework of partisan politics completely misses the point. For one thing, there is no significant difference between Democrats and Republicans on these issues. More importantly, Iraq and the war on terrorism are incidental to the overarching chronicle of the Empire Roy describes. The Empire is not America, or even "the West"; it is an interlocking network of stateless predatory finance/defense/media conglomerates. If the Empire seems to have a strong American character lately, it is only because America currently holds the strongest node in the network. Before that, it was Britain (see The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848). In the future it may be China.

In point of fact, nation-states and supranational organizations (e.g. the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization) do not drive the Empire. They are merely tools to carry out a geopolitical agenda. Through lobbyists, campaign donations, and purchase of treasury notes, corporations garner great political power. Under this perverting influence, nations can be steered in unexpected directions... frequently onto paths contrary to citizens' best interests, which may violate national ethos, or contravene founding principles. John Perkins and Alan B. Jones describe the mechanisms of predation in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and How The World Really Works, respectively.

That is not the focus of this book. OPGE is about ground-level resistance, particularly in the realm of information exchange. Speaking truths is the bedrock revolutionary act from which all other forms of opposition follow. Speaking truth to power is part of this, but even more important is speaking truths to each other. Pointing out the hypocrisies, lies, and inconsistencies of Empire is an empowering act. Roy tells plenty of truths in these pages, pulling back the curtain on the coalescing corporatist global order. The challenges of rebuffing our would-be oppressors are great, but readers should be inspired. The financial and political might of the Empire cannot stand in the face of an informed civil society. Radio host Alex Jones frequently refers to the "infowar" ("there is a war on for your mind"). This includes the struggle to speak and spread truths outside the controlled mainstream media. Arundhati Roy is one of the bright shining stars in the constellation of info-warriors exposing the Empire.

The obscene accumulation of power
power
The key notions in Arundhati Roy's texts are also the key elements in the history of mankind: power and powerlessness.
Power means survival, physically and morally, in the struggle for life on the political, economic, social and, of course, individual front.

means
Those in power have the means to survive, to extend their hegemony or to crush the opposition: wealth, weapons (of mass destruction), armies, media monopolies, transnational corporations and national and international long arms (intelligence services and secretive institutions like the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO).

policies
Through their media monopolies the powerful create a `controlled' reality, `a lunatic asylum'.
They send their hypocritical rhetoric of `free markets, justice and freedom' all over the world. But in the name of freedom and justice, they wage war and kill millions of human beings.
Free markets are protecting `western markets and force developing countries to lift their trade barriers, the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer.' More, free markets undermine democracy: transnational corporations `cannot push through highly profitable deals without the active connivance of the State machinery of corrupt authoritarian governments in poorer countries.'
There is no globalization of human rights, but only of money, patents, goods and services.
There is erosion of freedom: civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy under the veil of `The War on Terror.'

opposition, democracy
But, (non-violent) dissent had already clear results: it forced the powerful to drop their masks. It made them stand naked.
`The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling. We are the many and they the few. They need us more than we need them.'
Ultimately, the only means to break the stranglehold by those in power is true democracy (one man, one vote).

We need Arundhati Roy's mighty voice.
This book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.

A Book to Make you Squirm
Roy is a controversial writer.Her insights and conclusions often make the reader, if from the west, uncomfortable about the unfolding economy and world relationships with India.Having traveled in India a number of times, and having many Indian friends, this book highlights little understood cultural and economic issues taking place in one of the world's exploding economies.Whether you agree with Roy's conclusions or not, a reader wanting to be more aware of the expanding global economy on the Subcontinent will find this book a starting point for reflection and informed connection with India and its complex cultural relationship with the west.

Illogical, Barbaric thoughts translated into writing!
I was recently reading this book 'An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire' by Arundhathi
Roy.

I have heard a lot about her writing, but this was my first read of her products.
To say the truth , I am very disppaointed.

She keeps on arguing about some childish matters, not looking at the global picture.
For example, her arguments against globalisation in India is meaningless.Indian CEOs
make profit by paying less to their employers. This has been the case for the last 50
years or so. Only when the foriegn companies entered India with their aggressive
recruitment drive, people are getting paid decently. Looks like Roy wants us to make
the India rich CEOs, richer. She is hell-bent on proving that America deserved a
september 11, saying that US participated in killings in Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.
Isn't it a cyclic argument? If US deserved a 9/11 in 2001 for those killings, then She'll
argue in her next book that Afghanistan deserves US-led invasion in 2006 for 9/11.
Now you can guess her next book's main topic.

I think she wants to act as though she does not belong to any country, or is not
behind any government. To show this explicitly, her arguments slowly move towards Kashmir
and Gujarath. She does not know what to speak of here, as her nose lengths into these
topics. She blames the government, RSS, security forces, etc. What she does not understand
is that Kashmir has been like for almost 40 years. This topic has been well-studied, and many many
books written about it. In this case, just providing incomplete data that security forces
were responsible for some killings in Kashmir by no means proves anything.I would like to ask
her the following question: "How did you define 'responsible for'? how about suicide bombings?
or number of people killed by terrorists supported from acorss the border? Don't you remeber
the fact that terrorists killed 100 people in a single night during Bill Clinton's visit? "

Coming to Gujarath incident, I agree with whatever she is saying. Though I've not checked
the figures she has provided, I do believe that the state government headed by Modi
was irresponsible.

However, I strongly condemn her again for deliberately missing the information on
Mumbai blasts. She talks about number of muslims killed, etc, but then
how about the serial blasts? Weren't they executed by the muslim terrorists?
Why doesn't Roy provide the whole figure on number of blast victims?
If She argues that 3000 innocent US Citizens deserved to die on 9/11 just because
their government did bad in many aspects in the past, then why you are against
1000 muslims dying as only the muslim terrorists organized serial blasts in Mumbai
to kill 3000 innocent people?

All she does in this book is providing information to prove whatever
she thinks is right. I have not read a write-up before such as this one,
so cruel, violent, barbaric, and illogical. Just because she has got some award, don't
assume she is good. Don't even think of buying this book, such a wast of time,
effort and money.
... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (11)

Grasshoppers Refers To An Ill Wind Blowing This Way
The author points out that the current system of pretend to be democracies around the world have way too much representation with way too little democracy. These governments are need structual adjustments. Now for those not familiar with the draconian IMF/World Bank structural adjustments, forced upon governments in need of loans, they are designed to suck the life blood of society by extreme cuts to education, health care, infrastruture, local agriculture, local ANYTHING. Because in the international Help Business, local is a very bad four letter word, no matter how you choose to spell it: local is to be extermintated with extreme prejudice. So when the author writes that democracy is in need of structural adjustment, she means it in the normal way, not the Orwellian double-speak of the international instruments of international banks/transnational corporations. So, it is her play with words that cut deeply into the sinister character of the players in The New World Order, that are very soothing to my nature. The more deep and sharp the meaning, the more pleasure to my reading. And reading Arundhati Roy is, I assure you, extreme pleasure.
She says that today's democracies, under the current the stewardship, have fused with the free markets, into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of Maximizing Profit.
She refers to her India as the world's largest demon-crazy(as a Kashmiri protester once put it).
In today's privitized global march, freedom means choice, nothing to do with the human spirit, but alot to do wuth different brands of deoderant. Justice has to do with human rights(and of those, as they say, a few will do).
One of the means that this sinister plot is being staged worldwide, is with a dialogue of words that mask their intent, in truth they mean exactly the opposite of what they have traditionally meant. Sadly, this news-speak gattling gun of repeating mainstream news-speak opposites, soon become washed apposite. Suffice to say: those who cannot consume do not matter.
She notes that toay's corporate globalization demands an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the muntinies. It's called creating - a good investment climate. She also notes that history is now conforming more to an old Russian saying/The past is unpredictable. She writes about television anchors playing around with crucial facts, like young children in a sandbox.
The questions become difficult, as in/Are no elections better than meaningless elections? Or/Are intelligence agencies creating/infiltrating political parties? Or/Are there decoy politicians? Or/Have they created and destroyed political careers at will? Or/ Is there any connection between elections and democracy?
She is about the fighting back of the slow erosion of civil liberties, the day-to-day injustices. It means fighting to win back the hearts and minds of the people. It means keeping an eagle eye on public institutions and Demanding accountability. It means putting your ear to the ground and listening to the whisperings of the truly powerless. It means fighting displacement and dispossession and the relentless, everyday violence of abject poverty. Today's corporate globalization is being relentlessly and arbitrarily imposed on an essentially feudal society, tearing through its complex, tiered social fabric, ripping it apart culturally and economically.
The controlled corporate media purposely creates a schism between knowledge and information, between what we know and what were told, between what is unknown and what is asserted, between what is concealed and what is revealed, between fact and conjecture, between the real world and the virtual world, and so this has become a world of endless speculation and potential insanity. It's a poisonous brew that has been stirred to the most ugly, destructive political purpose.
She cuts right to the bone in her discussions on when genocide politics meets the free market, official recognition-or denial-of holocausts and genocides is a multinational business enterprise. It has rarely anything to do with historical fact or forensic evidence. Morality certainly does not enter the picture. It is an aggressive process of high-end bargaining that belongs more to the World Trade Organization than to the United Nations. The currency is geopolitics, the fluctuating markets for natural resources, that curious thing called futures trading, and plain old economic and military might. Or, as Robert McNamara might say/How much evil must we do in order to do good?
The poor, the so-called poor, have only one choice: to resist or to succumb. Perhaps they wonder how they can go on a hunger strike when they're already starving. How they can boycott foreign goods when they have no money to buy any goods. How can they refuse to pay taxes when they have no earnings? They know the new laws of the land criminalize the poor and conflate resistence with terrorism.

The author puts it all together in her field notes for us to use. Though she writes about India, her home country, she is talking symbolically about the world. But more importantly, she is writing about how to change its direction, away from a corporatized/privitized globaliztion.
We must find the courage to dream. To reclaim the romance. The romance in believing in dignity, in liberty, and in...

... justice for all. This is NOT negotiable.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!!!!!!!

Awesome
If you think you care about India , do yourself a favor and read this book by India's Noam Chomsky.

This is a terrible rambling of unimaginary proportions.
Avoid this like plague! Stay away from it and gain some mental peace

I was aghast after reading this rambling of a delusional woman whose world view filled with conspiracies and blaming every evil on the on progress and democracy. She goes on and on and on blaming everything on Capitalism, US and India. Some Islamic fanatic blew up a train! No problem ... There is an answer. It is all your and my fault. It is America's fault. Bush's fault. British fault. It is every one's fault except the guy who blew up the train. That is the new ultra-modern, neo-liberal, communist view of the world.

She hates me too and abuse me to the fullest extent because I am relying on "progress" andRoy's early essays were written in a voice that some progressive Americans would call "prophetic," but like many prophets she tended to overstate her case. There are no small things anymore. This stridency tended to make her writing less agreeable, too.exploiting all poor. It is Okay for her to get rich like this but it is not okay for any of us. By her going, Amazon should close the shop. No publisher should publish a book. We should not read or buy any thing.

Before you buy this book, Please read this beautiful review of this book. I wish I did before spending my hard earned money and making her rich.

[...]

Great points in the review ....

Roy's anger has had a coarsening effect upon her thinking and her writing. She has chosen to trade in the wildest forms of anti-Americanism and the crudest critiques of capitalism. Her activism has led her into a kind of mental atrophy.

Roy's early essays were written in a voice that some progressive Americans would call "prophetic," but like many prophets she tended to overstate her case. There are no small things anymore. This stridency tended to make her writing less agreeable, too.

She believes that the United States is responsible for chaos and murder in the Middle East--and now, thanks to globalization, in India too. But this book is not a plea for a more humane capitalism (something we urgently need). Instead, it is an attack on many of the good and democratic aspects of modern Indian life. Even worse, it is an assault on democracy itself. Roy's status as a famous woman of the far left has obscured the fact that she is an outright reactionary.

Worse, she sees it as nothing especially new. "The rules of the game changed suddenly and completely," she says of the end of the Cold War. "Millions of people who lived in remote villages and deep in the heart of untouched forests, some of whom had never heard of Berlin or the Soviet Union, could not have imagined how events that occurred in those far away places would affect their lives." Roy's implication is that India became part of the Pax Americana as soon as the Berlin Wall fell. She is wildly wrong about this. The two countries eyed each other warily in 1990s.

The simplest way to describe India's insufficient but impressive steps to combat poverty would be to say that they represent progress. But Roy has chosen to make progress--along with democracy--her bete noire.

The "twin towers" reference is worse than unseemly. Roy expends considerable energy explaining that international capital flows are responsible for destroying the foundations of nationhood. But when it suits her purposes she is equally happy to make a contradictory point, and blame society's ills on nationalism.

If Roy's disgust with America helps to explain her opinion of India, then her opinion of democracy helps to explain her disgust with America. From the very start of her book she shows nothing but condescension and contempt for democracy.

When she explains a Hindu party's demand that Muslim citizens "earn the `goodwill'" of the majority, she nicely catches the threat lurking beneath the ostensibly outstretched hand. But even this narrative is marred by her tiresome overstatements and stabs at cleverness. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is indeed despicable, but it is not "no less dangerous" than the Taliban. Moreover, Roy cannot seem to write about anti-Muslim bigotry and discrimination without mentioning Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. They seem to organize the entirety of her view of the world.

Since the two things that Roy hates most are democratic capitalism and Hindu fundamentalism, it makes sense that she would try and connect the two. Unfortunately, she has no evidence of any kind for such a connection, and so we are given passages such as this one: "It's interesting that just around the time Manmohan Singh, then the finance minister, was preparing India's markets for neo-liberalism, L.K. Advani [a BJP leader] was making his first Rath Yatra, fueling communal passion and preparing us for neo-fascism. In December 1992, rampaging mobs destroyed the Babri Masjid. In 1993, the Congress government of Maharashtra signed a power purchase agreement with Enron." This is equivalent to saying that in 1995 Michael Jordan returned to the NBA and in 1996 Bill Clinton was re-elected president. Roy adds, pathetically, that "the inexorable ruthlessness of one process feeds directly into the insanity of the other." One is tempted to remind Roy that correlation does not prove causation, but since she has not even bothered to prove correlation, the point would be futile.

Roy perfectly exemplifies the self-righteousness of radicals: she needs to see herself as a dissident in the wilderness, a lonely hero.

But these essays show a woman whose reading and experience and engagement with the world have served to narrow her thinking rather than enlarge it. Instead of allowing her reporting to shape her story, she has allowed her preconceived notions to shape every last drop of her analysis.

a must read
see the world as it is being used,
not the PR we get from some news programs
& government.

Indian Democracy exposed!
A collection of essays on behind the screen happenings of the largest democracy on earth!. Its worth a reading, whether you believe in or not in what Arundhathi say. One can feel the courage, anger and sarcasm on every page of this book. No wonder why corporate media and politians in Indian don't like her. ... Read more

Product Description
Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.Amazon.com Review
In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Royconjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazzimprovisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story ofyoung twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feelslike a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a geniuschild-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy ofpoetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of cultureand language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (897)

Journey to India!
I have been to India twice. The first thing I noticed, or rather felt, while reading
Roy's novel was the sensation of being catapulted back there--to the smells, to the places, to the images of the streets and the people and the small things--like red betel juice on someone's tongue.

Roy captures much of India, which can be very elusive to convey. Much of the flavor she creates and picture she paints I think goes unappreciated by people who have not had the pleasure of having been there. I very much enjoyed this aspect of Roy's work.

I also noticed some similarities between Roy and James Joyce. I do not know if Roy read Joyce, but let me point out a few common elements:

The creative use of the language of the conqueror (English) to demonstrate control over the conqueror. In Roy's case, this is obviously India/England. For Joyce, Ireland/England.

There is a stream of consciousness to much of the writing, and much of it is from the point of view of a child. In addition, there is a strong theme of innocence and experience, and the focus on the small things, the details, the grains of sand, so to speak, that make up the most important aspects of life. To understand the macrocosm through the microcosm... Roy even mentions Ulysses (although Homer, not Joyce).

Although Roy's prose does not have the depth of Joyce's, lacking his sophistication and control, and infinite layers of allusions, it does eloquently make use of symbolism, making profound connections to big ideas.

Both authors were also charged with obscenity.

Despite all these similarities, I found Roy's book to fall just a bit short. Despite all the accolades awarded to Roy, and despite my appreciation for her writing, I found the first 230 pages or so slow-going. I was bored. I kept thinking it would get more entertaining, but I became frustrated with the repetition. I know Roy had a point with these recursive flashbacks, but it still did not make me want to turn the page. Then suddenly, in the chapter of the Optimist and the Pessimist, the pace picked up and carried through with energy until the end.

I realize Roy has a non-linear structure, and a complex one at that, almost like a spider spiraling its web. I would like to go back again and reread the book to fully appreciate the patterns and chronology. Still, if an author bores a reader, he/she hasn't completely fulfilled her obligation.

Still, The God of Small Things is definitely worth the journey to India! And if you haven't been there, you should definitely make plans to go!

Kevin Glavin

Rock Star's Rainbow

It's like if Marquez wrote "Lady Chatterly's Lover"
If that doesn't sound appealing to you, this book probably won't be. I've read a number of both the positive and negative reviews on this site and most of them describe the book accurately: Flowery prose, fragmented sentences, non-linear treatment of time, unusual metaphors. If you want to read a book for "information" (as some negative reviewers have implied that they do), then you should read Hemingway instead.

That said, I could hardly put this book down. I almost reread it as soon as I was finished. The author creates a unique new language and lens through which to view the world. While others found the metaphors forced, I found them wonderfully colorful and original and appreciated the opportunity to hear a story told in words I wouldn't have come up with in my own head. I usually prefer more lighthearted stories (when I read fiction at all), but this tragedy is possibly my favorite book I've ever read.

I would summarize by saying that this is a truly great work of literature that definitely has its own distinct character. Readers who enjoy magical realism will probably enjoy it. Readers who prefer a more straightforward or literal read, or who are bothered by solecisms or other violation of literary convention, probably will not. Different strokes.

A masterpiece of literature
I bought this book a little over two weeks ago and it is, without a doubt, one of THE best books I've ever read. This is a story of betrayal, love, and the lengths that some people are willing to go to. Richly detailed in a style thoroughly unconventional, ricocheting back and forth between 1960's India and the 1990's, it tells the story of "two-egg-twins" separated from childhood due to one woman's pride, only to spend one day together after 20 years of longing for each other.

Rahel and Estha are characters unlike any others, forced from a young age to feel the harsher realities of life, starting with Estha's sex abuse, then the Sophie Mol's death, the murder of their friend and their mother's lover, Velutha and their eventual parting of paths, Estha's silence and Rahel's empty eyes unwittingly reflect this harsh chain of event.

I originally planned on getting "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie and bought this instead. It's certainly one mistake I don't regret. This fairly recent novel presents previously unseen perspectives of life hidden by the utmost fantasy-ish books of romantics and sugary endings. A true work of art.

This was a chore to read.
I really truly tried with this book but the rhythm is totally non-existent. She goes on for pages describing moments that do not propel the plot forward at all and worse- do not provide easy to follow descriptions. I thought the descriptions were very tedious because Roy went out of her way to describe things in an overly-cute way. The emotional passages relied way too much on shock value in my opinion and the long periods of no hope just seem grotesque. Worst of all there are no characters to identify with. Terrible terrible read.

A World-Lit, World-Class Winner
This book won the Booker Prize for Literature.And "in my book," it's also a world-class (as well as world-lit) winner, heartbreaking, haunting, and wise.

The main action takes place in India in 1969, but it jumps around in time.As the author put it, the story "begins at the end and ends in the middle."So we know from the beginning that there has been a terrible tragedy that permanently affected the lives of fraternal twins Estha (boy) and Rahel (girl.)The book is about finding out exactly what it was that happened; and how and why it happened.

I guessed most of the answer pretty early on, but I think that was the intent of the author.The book is more about the process than the solution, and she gives the reader plenty of hints, respecting the reader's intelligence and gently guiding him or her to figure out the answer for himself or herself.It's not so much a novel of mystery or suspense as it is one of psychology (of both personality and relationships) and social commentary.Ms. Roy shows enormous insight into her characters and their situation, and while the writing is deceptively lovely and easy to read, The God of Small Things has a great deal of depth.

Some of her insight comes from writing about what she knows.Parts of the story are autobiographical.Arundhati Roy grew up in the same rural town in India where the book is set, and her grandmother really did own and run a pickle factory.A recipe for Banana Jam is included which not only sounds delicious, but also easily doable for the average American cook. (I'm totally fascinated by how the banana puree turns scarlet red as it cooks.I've got to try that!)

Since the reader has already mostly figured out what happened, in a way the big "reveal" scene in which the full tragedy is described in detail, is anti-climactic; and again I feel certain that this is deliberate.It is as if Ms. Roy wants us to focus on the characters - why they each behaved as they did, and how they were affected, rather than the actual events.There are still a couple of surprises coming, though.Yet even with those, one feels less surprise than might be expected.There's a sense of, "Of course - I should have seen that coming."Because although the author hasn't given us any hints about those particular surprises, she has set up a certain subtle and carefully-crafted atmosphere in which such surprising/shocking/awful things become the natural or logical cause (in one case) or consequence (in the other case.)And this ability of hers to hit us with a big surprise while making it seem not all that surprising, is part of Ms. Roy's genius.

The ending is also anti-climactic, and yet again this is clearly the author's intent.Partly this is because the book ends, as she says, in the middle.I think that, after all the tragedy and loss of the the story, she wanted us to leave the book on a note of gentleness, love, and hope.

Social commentary is a strong theme throughout this work.(Arundhati Roy became a social activist after it was published to such acclaim that she was able to wield considerable influence.)As an adjunct to that, the breaking of taboos and the consequences of that are two major story lines.In one, the consequences are terrible.Yet later, an even more pervasive (across many cultures) and powerful taboo is broken without any noticeable consequence.In fact, Roy has prepared the reader so well that the taboo act comes across as natural, appropriate, and even a positive thing for the characters involved.It is a brilliant and thought-provoking juxtaposition.

I was totally charmed by the way this author plays with the English language.She thinks out of the box:breaks the rules in such a way that it makes sense, rather than causing chaos and confusion.She capitalizes certain words against the rules of grammar, as a very successful way of emphasizing them (". . . life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever . . . "). She makes up words, often by combining one or more words ("a viable die-able age""sicksweet", "a Furrywhirring and a Sariflapping", "dullthudding") or by deliberate misspellings ("Infinnate").The result is a sense of non-native-English-speakers' minds, a foreign perspective and way of thinking; or perhaps the perspective of a child.Either way, that is so fitting for the setting of the book.

And it's much the same as the way she breaks the rules of structure (i.e., rules of chronology, de-emphasizing the climax, letting us guess the answer to the mystery early on, etc.)in ways that work, that beautifully and creatively accomplish what she is trying to do with the book.She's an ultimate example of how someone with a thorough knowledge of the rules can know when and how to break them.

The God of Small Things is an outstanding work of fiction, one that I think fully deserves its award and acclaim.So far it is Ms. Roy's only novel, as she has been occupied in the decade since its publication with social activism.However, the Kindle edition that I read included an interview with the author in which she says that she is now writing a new book.I hope that it is finished and published soon.I would love to read more of her work.


Quotes from The God of Small Things:

"Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her.A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place.On days like this there was something restless and untamed about her.As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorcée-hood.Even her walk changed from a safe mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes.She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine.She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims.
What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge?This air of unpredictability?It was what she had battling inside her.An unmixable mix.The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of the suice bomber."

"He trembled his own body like a man with malaria."

"It is after all so easy to shatter a story.To break a chain of thought.To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.
To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do."

"It's true.Things can change in a day."

(321 pages) ... Read more

Product Description

As the United States pushes for war on Iraq, Arundhati Roy, the internationally acclaimed author of The God of Small Things, addresses issues of democracy and dissent, racism and empire, and war and peace in this collection of new essays.

The eloquence, passion, and political insight of Roy's political essays have added legions of readers to those already familiar with her Booker Prize-winning novel. -Invited to lecture as part of the prestigious Lannan -Foundation series on the first anniversary of the unconscionable attacks of September 11, 2001, Roy challenged those who equate dissent with being "anti-American." Her previous essays on globalization and dissent have led many to see Roy as "India's most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence" (New York Times).

War Talk collects new essays by this prolific writer. Her work highlights the global rise of religious and racial violence. From the horrific pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat, India, to U.S. demands for a war on Iraq, Roy confronts the call to militarism. Desperately working against the backdrop of the nuclear recklessness between her homeland and Pakistan, she calls into question the equation of nation and ethnicity. And throughout her essays, Roy interrogates her own roles as "writer" and "activist."

"If [Roy] continues to upset the globalization applecart like a Tom Paine pamphleteer, she will either be greatly honored or thrown in jail," wrote Pawl Hawken in Wired Magazine. In fact she was jailed in March 2002, when -India's Supreme Court found Roy in contempt of the court after months of attempting to silence her criticism of the government.

Fully annotated versions of all Roy's most recent -essays, including her acclaimed Lannan Foundation -lecture from September 2002, are included in War Talk. Arundhati Roy is the winner of the Lannan Foundation's Prize for Cultural Freedom, 2002, and will be returning to the U.S. in association with the Lannan Foundation in 2003. Roy's most recent collection of essays, Power Politics, now in its second edition, sold over 25,000 copies in its first 12 months.

Customer Reviews (26)

This Isn't Pacifism
Normally I never read books like this and by that I mean books from the Moore/Franken-Hannity-Coulter crowd.You get nothing insightful out of them but this one is pretty short and I wasn't doing anything else for the afternoon.Obviously then I knew what I was getting into before I read this book.I knew Arundhati Roy was but a socialist caricature.I knew she was involved with important and eminently serious groups like 'Queers Against Israel.'I knew she deeply hated the idea of the United States using its glorious military might to brutally smash Islamic terrorism.None of this seemed to matter much at the time since I find Arundhati to be a captivatingly beautiful woman (at times) and that level of attraction has a way of sort of momentarily evaporating my repugnance for these types of people.

The thing is I've built up an immunity of sorts to some of the aforementioned flaws.What I simply cannot stand however are folks who try to mask their American hatred as patriotism and that is precisely what Roy does with this book of hers.This is just another tract on how citizenship, good and productive citizenship, is mostly a passive activity, how nobody should be responsible to anyone else, and how pacifism and dissent are the highest forms of patriotism.In typical hippy/idealist fashion citizenship for Arundhati is more of a state of mind than anything else; it certainly doesn't place any demands on the individual.I mean, I love Jim Morrisson...doesn't that make me American ENOUGH?

NO!I hate the way folks like her try to pass off inaction as something noble.Citizenship is about sharing an intimate sense of responsibility to your community, passing something greater onto future generations, and, GASP!, occassionally having to bite the bullet (no pun) and storm a beach head or advance on a hill.I don't know where this idea came from that America, that the American idea, is just this right to do whatever you want.I really have no idea.I really have no clue how someone could tell you she owns a Doors album and then seriously expect you to consider her a decent citizen, a real American.Many of us have deep roots in this country, respect for its ideals, family who made supreme sacrifices so that we could live safely and freely.Books that make light of all this (especially when written by folks that have been here for like MAYBE 5, 10 years) is to heavy a burden to bear.This is just another diatribe that attempts to crush that patriotic spirit and convince us that wallowing around on the couch writing poetry would be a much better way to live ones life.

This isn't even authentic pacifism either, which I don't even have a problem with if it is indeed genuine.Roy detests the notion of the United States using its glorious military might to brutally smash Islamic warmongers though not suprisingly her pacifism seems to dissapear when it comes to these Islamic fanatics themselves.If HAMAS wants to blow up Pizza Huts and run into elementary schools with guns blazing then that's legitimate retaliation.If a United States Marine shoots a civilian who provides moral support to the folks planting IED's all over the neighborhood then he should be Court Marshaled, convicted, and slapped with a life sentence.Nothing new here folks.

This woman is in outer space.Anyone who mentions what a great tragedy a nuclear attack would be for the squirrel and butterfly populations (she really says this!) needs to reexamine their view of what exactly is important in this world.

We aren't going to change human nature anytime soon folks.War is something we're going to have to learn to live with.

Arundhati Roy is a great speaker and essayist but she needs to tone down the anti-Americanism:
I first want to start off this review by saying that "I love America." I don't love, or condone the malicious acts that iniquitous individuals in our government have committed in the past and are still committing today, but I love my country. I think sometimes individuals such as Arundhati seem to forget the good that has come out of America's struggle. Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." And there are many Americans that are vigilant today. Individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Milton William Cooper have died for the cause of vigilant libertarianism, which I think many of us forget from time to time.
What gets me in angst is that individuals such as Arundhati pontificate about the evils in our government, but fail to separate the people from the government, and this failure has a tendency to lead people into contemplating the wrong conclusions.
A case in point: Arundhati wrote an introduction to Noam Chomsky's book "For Reason of State"(which is reprinted in this book) and in it she says, "How has the United States survived its terrible past and emerged smelling so sweet? Not by owning up to it [in reference to the American Indian Wars], not by making reparations, not by apologizing to black Americans or native Americans, and certainly not by changing its ways. Like most other countries, the United States has rewritten its history. But what sets the United States apart from other countries, and puts it way ahead in the race, is that it has enlisted the services of the most powerful, most successful publicity firm in the world: Hollywood."
Now here's where her diatribe suffers a syllogistic dilemma; the United States is a country not a political institution. Governments are political institutions entrusted to run a country and (so-called) qualified individuals are placed in-charge of running these institutions in the interest of the people.
But we must remember that sometimes-corrupt individuals egregiously take advantage of governments. This is known as Machiavellianism.
So, to put it in layman's terms, the inquiry is, who are the people running the government? And what are their individual crimes? When making arguments such as this, one has to identify the perpetrators of the crimes in question.
Perpetrators: meaning the people who committed the criminal acts!
Arundhati Roy (like many others) commits a dubious deed. Which is, she doesn't name names. Accusations without naming the accused are vapid complaints.

{{{GIVE US THE NAMES OF THE PERPATRATORS IN QUESTION!}}}
That's all I'm trying to say.

Furthermore, insofar as her remark about the U.S. rewriting history, the U.S. has not rewritten history. U.S. history is in abundance; it's just based on a litany of interpretations and opinions that cause one to resort to syllogisms to delineate the axiomatic conclusions. There are no absolute truths in history, that's just a fact considering the world governments' conspiracies that are hidden from public scrutiny. But we can come to some semblance of the truth by going to the library and reading books or researching on-line.
Now, if she wanted to point out that the U.S. educational system is mendacious with its ad hominems she'd be totally correct. So, then why doesn't she identify the individuals who own and control the educational institutions in question? Always ask yourself these questions when reading books like this. Don't ever take anything anyone says at face value.
And about her Hollywood comment: institutionalized-Hollywood is part of the governmental conspiracy, not part of the American people. The people that control, abuse and manipulate the government are the ones who own Hollywood. So the government never enlisted Hollywood because institutionalized-Hollywood has always been apart of the conspiracy.

Here's another remark she makes without thinking it through. "Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And of course, there's the business of war." If you read her entire account you'll see where she's going with this particular argument since she is referring to U.S. oil/war profiteering, but to say that wars are never fought altruistically is absurd, it depends on whose side you're on. There are noble causes, remember Nat Turner's "Great Slave Rebellion," Osceola and "the Seminole Wars", or "Shay's Rebellion." Yes, there are antagonist then there's the opposition who'll stand recalcitrant to antagonistic hegemony, (in other words, heroes who are ready to stand up against the opposition.)

Also, on page-50 she said, "To call someone anti-American, indeed to be anti-American (or for the matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie, you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good, you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorist." She then said, "I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11th rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've realized that it's not foolish at all. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war." Her statement rings so true, but if she really believes that then why does she speak in absolutes and generality instead of naming the accused.

This book has a lot of faults, which is why what I'm going to say is an incongruity. I enjoyed this book. Arundhati Roy is an extremely articulate speaker and writer who I think is sincere about being the voice of the downtrodden. I just think she should be more mindful of what she says and start charging individual perpetrators with war crimes instead of marginalizing an entire nation when discussing world affairs. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to more of her writing in the future because I believe she has a good heart and means well.

Urgent And Powerful
"War Talk" is an urgent message to the world from one of the great activists of our time, India's Arundhati Roy. In this powerful collection of essays, Roy reflects on the state of the world in the "War On Terror" era and on the disastrous measures undertaken by the Indian government in regards to Muslims and other minorities. This book is a journey through the world as Roy sees it, experiences it. She is of course famous for her novel "The God Of Small Things," and here she achieves the same kind of poetry and cultural insight, she forms images with words, feelings with phrases. Roy chronicles with chilling detail massacres carried out in India against Muslims by radical right-wing government forces and forces us to confront our own government's hijacking by radical religious elements. The great piece in the book is "Come September," a powerful speech Roy delivered in 2002 that is a perfect expression of the post-9/11 world. She reminds us that we are not alone in the world when it comes to being attacked by terrorists, and that we have exported violence ourselves. Roy points out that September 11 is also the anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup in Chile against the elected government of Salvador Allende. Allende was killed and the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet took power and opened concentration camps and torture chambers through-out Chile. There is a beautiful style to the way Roy deconstructs language and terms, making us exam official doctrine for what it is. She writes a wonderful essay on Noam Chomsky which praises Chomsky's efforts and in a broader sense covers our need to analyze and question media. "War Talk" is a warning on a world being abused by neo-liberalism and radical capitalism which Roy believes will collapse in the same style as Soviet communism. In striking passages she imagines a world consumed in nuclear war, imagining a radioactive landscape where her loved ones and her favorite things have perished under a mushroom cloud, a warning to us all. One finds a sense of cultural unity here, when Roy describes the problems India faces we realize many are not so different from our own, human beings must fight the same evils wherever they surface. Those who want to read something with more depth and meaning should read Roy, her comments are well-researched and constructed, it's almost like the alternative to the kind of radical dribble we get from figures like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly. Concerned citizens should read Roy and know the history of our world.

Thought-provoking and disturbing
Whether or not you agree with Ms. Roy, reading her book will provoke you, and thus, to me, it is worth-while.It is particularly incendiary if you a regular American living a regular life.Ms. Roy spares few in allotting responsibility for the troubles of the world's poor and war-stricken.I did find her somewhat anti-American, but then, I'm biased.

Definitely take a look.Ms. Roy is extremely readable.I loved God of Small Things, and though I normally don't read political non-fiction, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Frank Commentary
This book exposes the truth about the injustices occuring in India without being clouded by passion. As always Ms. Roy gives the reader an honest account of what is actually transpiring. She gives the reader a portrait of the various people who are affected by these "social" projects without coming across as the evening news. This is definately a must read for anyone who believes in justice for everyone, not just the wealthy. ... Read more

Product Description
From the bestselling author of The God of SmallThings comes a scathing and passionate indictment of biggovernment's disregard for the individual.

In her Booker Prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things,Arundhati Roy turned a compassionate but unrelenting eye on one familyin India. Now she lavishes the same acrobatic language and fiercehumanity on the future of her beloved country. In this spiritedpolemic, Roy dares to take on two of the great illusions of India'sprogress: the massive dam projects that were supposed to haul thissprawling subcontinent into the modern age--but which instead havedisplaced untold millions--and the detonation of India's first nuclearbomb, with all its attendant Faustian bargains.

Merging her inimitable voice with a great moral outrage andimaginative sweep, Roy peels away the mask of democracy and prosperityto show the true costs hidden beneath. For those who have beenmesmerized by her vision of India, here is a sketch, traced in fire,of its topsy-turvy society, where the lives of the many are sacrificedfor the comforts of the few. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

roy strikes again
Arundhati Roy is more or less guaranteed to hit below the belt.For an American reader, she is also guaranteed to teach you something you probably knew little about.She invariably does so in a marvelous fashion; her prose is unmatched.If you enjoyed her work of fiction, The God of Small Things, I encourage you to try her non-fiction works.

This book focuses on the dams on India; it's a passionate argument against damming and in favor of considering people, all the poor people of India.

Roy also discusses India's testing of the atomic bomb, another topic which most Americans probably haven't spent a great deal of time considering.Roy is convincing and writes from the heart in a way very few politicians or politicists do.

Your opinion is required
My India-born spouse once described the difference in how he and I had been taught, through subtle societal reward, to make and respond to assertions. "If you say, 'The sky is blue,'" he said, "I think, 'Ann thinks the sky is blue.' But if I say to you, 'The sky is blue,' you say, 'Oh, it is?' You're ready to believe, just because I stated it as fact. That's why you hedge your thoughts with the words, 'I think,' rather than just saying what you think."

I recall that conversation as I read Arundhati Roy's The Cost of Living, in particular, the essay "The Greater Common Good." Because her voice is clear and compelling, my first response is, "Fifty million people have been displaced by ineffective dam-building in India! Good god, what can be done?"

Then I slow down. Remember. "Arundhati Roy thinks that fifty million people have been displaced in India, by dams she thinks are ineffective. Does she make her case?"

She does.

"The Greater Common Good" means to persuade, but its reportage is separable, sentence by sentence, from the argument. Roy's research is compiled, not from debunkable interviews, but from government plans and records, World Bank reviews and estimates of economic benefit and capital cost, and from statistics such as river flow, reservoir levels, areas of irrigated land, numbers of malaria cases, and megawatts of power produced. More than careful, Roy gleefully points out that the Indian government has produced no studies to verify the difference from the lowest baseline calculation of displaced people, or to quantify agricultural benefits gained from completed dam projects.

To follow along, you'll need to work through numbers and a cast of characters, as with any story about accounting and the preservation of power. The payoff to your attentiveness is that once you gather who's done what and at what cost in India's dam-building plans, you are as fully armed as Roy herself to examine the rest of her assertions. You'll have enough facts to agree or disagree with her thesis, "Carelessness cannot account for fifty million disappeared people... Let's not delude ourselves. There is method here, precise, relentless, and 100 percent manmade."

Roy doesn't leave the American reader the familiar out: "I don't live there. I don't have the right to an opinion." Roy works in facts as well as narrative; you'll be hard pressed to evade responsibility for your assent or dissent from her conclusions. Like this one: "Resettling 200,000 people in order to take (or pretend to take) water to 40 million--there's something very wrong with the scale of operations here. This is Fascist math." You can agree or disagree... but reading "The Greater Common Good," you can't wheedle your way out of having a stance.

Two treasures are secreted away inside "The Greater Common Good." One is the story of modern Satyagraha--the practice of nonviolent resistance--how the villagers of the Narmada valley walked into the valley when it was to be flooded, willing to drown. They won a postponement and an independent review of the dam project. The other is a thin, brilliant thread through the narrative: Roy's support of her right as a citizen to research and respond to her government's decisions. It implies the reader has an obligation to respond as well.

In a single sentence, in the heart of the essay, Roy says, "The people whose lives were going to be devastated were neither informed nor consulted nor heard." Her challenge to the reader echoes, unstated: So what do you think of that? What do you think?

Powerful
This is the first book by Roy that I read, and my favorite.In comparison to The God of Small Things, that's saying a lot.The first essay is the most powerful and clear explanation I have ever read anywhere about the failings of organisations such as the WTO; however, it is not only an attack on international financial institutions.It also discusses the abuses that occur on a national and local level in conjunction with the work of international groups.I suggest this book to anyone who is having trouble understanding the objections to globalization and the WTO.

Dams, poverty, and nuclear insanity
This is a short but effective book. It's divided into two parts. In part one, Arundhati Roy writes about dam-building in India. This heavily-footnoted chapter gets a longer treatment in her next book, Power Politics. Here she introduces the topic, adding a lot of context to the statistics. Her outrage is palpable. This leads into the second part, and angry essay about India and Pakistan becoming part of the nuclear fraternity (both countries publicly tested nuclear weapons in May of 1998). Both countries have so many problems --- and so much tension between them over Kashmir --- that this development can only be considered a disaster for the hundreds of millions of people in the region.

Arundhati Roy is someone we should all listen to. She's an activist, novelist, and a great writer. This book is a good introduction to her work.

Aware; insightful
Contrary to her critics, I do not believe this woman can be neatly dismissed as a 'Marxist'. In many places she describes how these kind of huge, overblown, poorly considered projects are the natural result of India's huge, titularly 'socialist' bureaucracy. Like me, and unlike Noam Chomsky or others, she does not traffic in conspiracy theories. That is, she does not insist that a hidden, evil intelligence is in charge of the events she describes. Rather, she is aware of the DISorganization that naturally occurs whenever human beings get together in large groups--like militaries or bureaucracies, leftist or rightist, with good intentions or ill.

It would also be a mistake for anyone to think this book pertains only to India. As an American, I can see many of the same sorts of elements she describes: a failure to understand the links between ecology and economy; false economies (that is, technology that awes in its scale yet fundamentally degrades rather than improves human life); misplaced government priorities; rule by the courts, etc. ... Read more

Product Description

On publication Arundhati Roy's first novel The God of Small Things (1997) rapidly became an international bestseller, winning the Booker Prize and creating a new space for Indian literature and culture within the arts, even as it courted controversy and divided critical opinion.

This guide to Roy’s ground-breaking novel offers:

• an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of The God of Small Things
• a critical history, surveying the many interpretations of the text from publication to the present
• a selection of new essays and reprinted critical essays by Padmini Mongia, Aijaz Ahmad, Brinda Bose, Anna Clarke, Émilienne Baneth-Nouailhetas and Alex Tickell on The God of Small Things, providing a range of perspectives on the novel and extending the coverage of key critical approaches identified in the survey section
• cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism
• suggestions for further reading.

Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of The God of Small Things and seeking not only a guide to the novel, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Roy's text.

Product Description
As a novelist, Arundhati Roy is known for her lush language and intricate structure. As a political essayist, her prose is searching and fierce. All of these qualities shine through in the interviews collected by David Barsamian for The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile, recorded between 2001 and 2003.Whether discussing her childhood or the problems of translation in a multilingual society, Roy and Barsamian, the producer and host of Alternative Radio, engage in a lively and accessible manner. Speaking candidly and casually, Roy describes her participation in a demonstration against the Indian dam program as "absolutely fantastic". She jokes that her Supreme Court charge for "corrupting public morality" -- in the case of her novel The God of Small Things -- should have been changed to "further corrupting public morality." She calls on her training as an architect to explain what she means by the "physics of power". Like a house of cards, she argues that "unfettered power!cannot go berserk like this and expect to hold it all together."Roy has been acclaimed for her courage (Salman Rushdie) and her eloquence (Kirkus Reviews), and her writing has been described as "a banquet for the senses" (Newsweek). She has found a readership among fiction enthusiasts and political activists. The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile captures Roy speaking one-on-one to her audience, revealing her intense and wide-ranging intellect, her very personal voice, and her opinion on momentous political events.Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things was awarded the Booker Prize in 1997. She is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom. ... Read more

Product Description
Arundhati Roy, the author of The God of Small Things, explores the politics of writing and the price of "development" driven by profit. Roy challenges the idea that only "experts" can speak out on such urgent matters as nuclear war, the human costs of the privatization of India's power supply by U.S.-based energy companies, and the construction of monumental dams in India. Includes new essays written since September 11. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Dissent is the only thing worth globalizing
For A. Roy, a writer has the responsibility to take sides overtly.
In these violent diatribes, she tears the masks of the `missionaries to redeem the wretched' and of those preaching privatization and globalization as the one and only solution for the whole world's economic problems.

The hypocrisy of globalization
For A. Roy, globalization has nothing to do with the eradication of poverty. It will not pull the Third World out of the stagnant morass of illiteracy, religious bigotry or underdevelopment. In India, 70 % of the population still has no electricity and 30 % is still illiterate.
Globalization means crudely and cruelly `Life is Profit'. `Its realm is raw capital, its conquest emerging markets, its prayers profits, its borders limitless, its weapons nuclear.'
Privatization (of agriculture, seeds, water supply, electricity, power plants, commodities, telecommunications, knowledge) consists only in the transfer of productive public assets from the State to private interests (transnational corporations).
The globalization's economic agenda `munches through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts.'One example: by hugely subsidizing their farm industries, the rich countries put impoverished subsistence farmers in the Third World out of business and chase them into the cities.

The hypocrisy of the war against terrorism
For A. Roy, the rich countries are the real worshippers of the cult of violence. They manufacture and sell almost all the world's weapons and possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, nuclear).
At the head of ICAT (The Coalition Against Terror) stays a country which spends mind-boggling military budgets to fight a few bunches of manipulated terrorists created by the hegemon himself. It committed `the most of genocides, ethnic cleansing, and human rights violations. It sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and supports military and economic terrorism.' Its aim is full spectrum dominance.
But, as Paul Krugman remarked, the replacement of the Cold War issue by the (manipulated) terrorism one as a justification for massive military spending was (and is) a very big failure.

Arundhati Roy's bitter and angry texts are a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.

Confirmed my doubts about so calledglobalization
This is the first time I read a book written by Ms Arundhati Roy. After a long time I read a book so fast. Since last year's financial crisis, I'm trying to understand a little about economics, banks, capitalism, socialism, innovation, cheap labor etc etc...and then I stumbled upon this book. It's a shame for Indian politicians, elected officials, elites to not care about the villagers and tribal population, it's a shame that India in terms of development still doing things which used to happen in the developed world 60 years ago.

I always wondered why India is not progressing much in terms of scientific and technological innovation, and she explained that with the example of BHEL. That is an eye opener for me.

It would be interesting to know what she thinks when so called socialist Obama is the president of USA, and the feudal party of Congress is ruling India. She does not talk much about the corporate oligarchy or the western banking cartel or federal reserve or the US dollar being the world's reserve currency or the rumor of new world order for totalitarian democracy. It would be interesting if she writes another book in the contemporary context.

A Message for the Ages
Still wondering if corporations are calling the shots in the global economy?You won't be after reading this book.And don't be fooled because some of the book focuses on India - the same industrializing machinations are at work in every country on the globe.The `power' referred to in the title has to do with dams being built on major rivers throughout the developing world, but the politics of corporate money and influence go far beyond dams.

One of the best parts of reading this book is Roy's consistent use of visual imagery.For example, in the section titled "The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin," Roy makes the following statements:

"(It's common knowledge that water is becoming a scarce resource.One billion people in the world have no access to safe drinking water.)The "market" decrees that the scarcer something is, the more expensive it becomes.But there is a difference between valuing water and putting a market value on water.No one values water more than a village woman who has to walk miles to fetch it.No one values it less than urban folk who pay for it to flow endlessly at the turn of a tap."

Roy's passion, intelligence, and commitment to social justice shine throughout every chapter.If you've ever heard her speak, you can imagine her saying the words in her soft voice as you read them.

state of affairs for india
This book is the state of affairs for whats happening in India currently(2006) and concludes with a discussion of world affairs and the relationship of India to the world. A very intersesting discussion is presented about outsourcing to India.

Politics of Persuasion
I really wanted to give this book a 5 star review.I admire Roy's courage.I think that Power Politics raises some serious questions about globalization, dam development, the war on terror, etc.The style of her writing is also very engaging.I think it keeps the reader off balance and unsure of what will come next, but in a good way that adds to the impact of her writing.

However, I absolutely cannot give this book more than 3 stars for 2 reasons.First, the 5 essays in this book really don't feel like they belong together.Roy starts off talking about her role as a writer, then its on to "Big Dams", then the Indian Supreme Court and finally the war on terrorism.While I think all of these are important topics, Roy did not do a good job of integrating them into one coherent idea.

Secondly, I thought Roy presented some pretty startling statisticsin Power Politics, so I did a little fact checking.While some of her statistics definitely check out, others do not.Some of those numbers she throws out without citing any source at all and in one instance she attributes something to a source that is no where in that source!("Today, a chapter in the India Country Study says the figure [of people displaced by Big Dams in India] could be as high as fifty-six million people." p 67) You can read the study yourself online (dams(dot)org).It never says anything about 56 million people being displaced by Big Dams in India.

Maybe it's a personal pet-peeve, but making up your own numbers and misquoting studies does not fly with me.So read Power Politics if you want to.It is a very engaging book.But I encourage everyone to take Roy's "facts" with a grain of salt. ... Read more

Product Description
Violence begets violence—so believes the majority of people around the world who have stood up in protest against war. Stop the Next War Now is a reflective look and call to action to end violence, by acclaimed peace activists, experts, and visionaries, including Eve Ensler, Barbara Lee, Arianna Huffington, Janeane Garafalo, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many more. The book shares expert insight on the issues and powers-that-be that encourage war, including the media, politicians, global militarization, and the pending scarcity of natural resources. A powerful, smart, and passionate work, this book aims to educate and reflect on the effectiveness of peace movement activities and offer hope—through shared ideas, action steps, and checklists—to transform a culture of violence to a culture of peace. How can people humanize each other, ask the authors, and act as responsible global citizens? With vitality, joy, and a dash of CODEPINK-style humor, Stop the Next War Now insists that the time is ripe for the first-ever global movement to put an end to war—and tells readers what they can do about it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Great Ideas Needing Action
Tell everyone you know to read this book!What a great way to promote peace, and offer a very interesting read.I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned about where our world is headed right now.

less than 0 really
Susie Stalin aka Medea (child killer) Benjamin is a really disturbed maniac and should be ashamed of herself.This woman is devoid of any intellectual honesty.A puppet of the Left she disgraces peace.As anyone know there is no peace without justice.Apparently Ms Benjamin would rather live enslaved in a Communist state than as a free individual.

The best I can say about this book is it's comic in its infantile brashness.

Stop the Next War
What a bunch of liberal fanaticism.What a
shame so many trees had to die to print this trash.

Marie Jones, BookIdeas.com book reviewer states:
We live in dark and violent times. That is why a book like "Stop the Next War Now," edited by CodePink founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, is such an important tool in promoting peace, hope and the belief that a small group of individuals really can change the world...for the better.

This amazing and empowering book is a collection of essays by some of the leading female experts, scholars, artists, activists and journalists in the world, all coming together to talk about their vision for a world without war. But the essays are more than just wishful thinking, they are powerful and passionate pleas for peace and motivating and energetic calls to action that provide the reader with real and effective ways to make a difference.

Featured in "Stop the Next War Now" are such luminaries as Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Nobel Prize winner Jody Williams, author Naomi Klein, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Journalist Helen Thomas, activists such as Julia Butterfly Hill, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Doris "Granny D" Haddock, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and dozens more. The voices and visions of these great leaders speak of the terrors and horrors of war, the silent victims of violence, the tragedy of global poverty, the demand for corporate responsibility, the dangers of false democracy, the power of dissent, the need for non-violent solutions, the healing forces of hope and so many other topics, all from the viewpoint of women who have seen the sides of war and violence that the media rarely chooses to show us.

Editors Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans formed CodePink: Women For Peace (www.codepinkalert.org), an organization devoted to global peace issues, as a way for others like them - women who care about the world - to come together and protest, organize, educate and change. Since its inception in 2002, the organization has grown tremendously and is often mentioned in the news, challenging the rush to war and injustices of our own government, as well as those of other nations.

Mothers, artists, working women, political officials, activists... all women from all walks of life converge their resources, knowledge and passion in this amazing book that will no doubt serve as inspiration to generations currently working for peace, and generations to come, whose very survival depends on "stopping the next war now."

This is a moving and challenging book, a call to action, a tool for change and so much more. The stories and ideas of the authors who contributed to "Stop the Next War Now" have the ability to really make a difference...but only if enough readers choose to pick up this book, pay attention, and learn. Buy this book. Read it, then pass it on to a friend. If enough people learn that there are effective responses and alternatives to war and violence, who knows just how bright our future could be?

REV. MARIE JONES, author of LOOKING FOR GOD IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

Great ideas
I'm about 75 pages into this book so far, and I love it. It offers up a lot of food for thought, including ideas for moving from a "dominator" model in our society to a more democratic "partnership" model, how to educate your children in peacebuilding, and so on. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 2001, this book brings together all of Arundhati Roy's political writings so far. This revised paperback edition includes two new essays, written in early 2002: 'Democracy: Who's She When She's Not at Home', which examines the horrific communal violence in Gujarat, and 'War Talk: Summer Games with Nuclear Bombs', about the threat of nuclear war in the Subcontinent. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Angel is She
Though her writing may appeal primarily to left-wing intellectuals, this book is a person every individual should have on his or her bookshelf.Her longest essay in this book, The Greater Common Good, focuses on large dam construction, but covers many issues of philosophical interest.Why take away from one and give to another?A utilitarian could make the argument that we should strive for the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but who is receiving the greatest good?We know that it is true that dams harm the environment in a variety of different ways -- e.g. waterlogging.Taking this into consideration along with the sheer costs and the number of people who suffer from dam building, is the utilitarian argument really valid?It seems to me, that it is in fact not even a utilitarian argument.

Arundhati Roy would agree.In this book, she explains that in most development projects throughout India, apart from the Sardar Sarovar project that has received so much attention, the displaced have no records, and they leave virtually no trace at all (Roy 104).This makes it nearly impossible for us to tell exactly or even approximately how many millions of people are suffering from the results of dam construction.Apart from this, according to Roy, the government of India has not issued a post-project evaluation on any of the 3,600 dams it has constructed (Roy 59). How, then, are we to know what good the dams are doing, if they are doing any good at all?Is it really worth it to not know, at the cost of the people?

Many other interesting topics are addressed in this book, and her unique writing style is sure to get a reaction out of you, whatever political beliefs you may hold.I guarantee that by the end of the first short essay you'll either be screaming "yes!" with passion in your voice, or banging your fists on the table in anger.Only a writer as good as Roy is capable of that.

Roy's beautiful, eloquent, and powerful writing style encourages many people in the West to consider issues they may have never considered otherwise. Roy's life has been devoted to the service of humankind, and I am forever in admiration of her strong, passionate spirit.

Read it, or miss out.

... Read more

Product Description
In her August 16, 2004, address to the 99th annual meeting of the American Sociological Associationon "Public Power in the Age of Empire," writer Arundhati Roy brilliantly examines the limits to democracy in the world today. The speech was broadcast nationally on C-Span Book TV, Democracy Now! and Alternative Radio. Bringing the same care to her prose that she brought to her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, Roy discusses the need for social movements to contest the occupation of Iraq and the reduction of "democracy" to elections with no meaningfulalternatives allowed. She explores the dangers of the "NGO-ization of resistance," shows how governments that block nonviolent dissent in fact encourage terrorism and examines the role of the corporate media in marginalizing oppositional voices. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Justice
Nobody expressed better the existence of an Empire than a president who said `I don't care what the facts are'. In other words, `I (can) always do what I want without any justification.'

In this violent pamphlet, Arundhati Roy attacks the existent world order and the policies of terror under the helm of the one and only hegemon: `the most powerful nation in the world with its unmatchable arsenal of weapons, its history of having waged and sponsored endless wars and the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear bombs is peopled by a terrified citizenry. This synthetically manufactured fear is used to gain public sanction for further aggression.'
Legislation, like the Patriot Act, curbs freedom in the name of protecting freedom. Antiterrorism laws are used to intimidate civil society.

On the economic front, Western countries which together spend more than one billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries withdraw all agricultural subsidies.

In the era of neo-liberalism, poverty is a crime and protesting against it is being defined as terrorism. But, for those who are on the wrong side of Empire, the humiliation is becoming unbearable. For some, there is no alternative but terrorism, albeit vicious, ugly and dehumanizing. But so is war waged by the hegemon and its allies.

The alternative to terrorism is justice. For Arundhati Roy, `no amount of nuclear weapons or full-spectrum-dominance can buy peace at the cost of justice.'

With her sharp pen, Arundhati Roy defends violently the mass of the wretched.
Her text is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.

Amazing book of information
I really enjoyed this book, the language, the expressive power, the content and the goal is fabulous. I am very impressed by the author and this book. I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
collected essays by literary specialists and social commentators. an exciting symposium ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

I loved this book.
Close to a five star review.This book was written in 1997 and why am I the first one to review it.It's great, set in India and a really interesting glimpse at the chaste system, India, dysfunctional families, suffering, poverty, tragedy and growing up in India.Beautifully written, suspenseful. ... Read more

Product Description
This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remains of the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The God of Small Details
This story is artistically crafted and exceptionally poetic with lots and lots of similes and repetition. The author clearly has her own unique style. The story moves backwards and forwards - it is often difficult to keep these shifting time periods in perspective - and in the telling we learn many historical facts: we note the complications of beurocracy, the legacy of colonization, the influence of American TV, sexual molestation, the unjust treatment of untouchables, etc... The greatness of this book lies in the way the writer has crafted her story. She is without doubt the God of Small Details.
Although I found this story rambling at times, I highly commend the tremendous artistry of this author in this tale of love and loss.

More Than a Guide: A Scholarly Work
The novel resonated with me on so many levels that I simply needed to dig deeper, so I bought my first reader's guide ever.What I found was a scholarly work as fascinating as the novel itself.It not only illuminated the structure and symbolism of Roy's book, it provided a rich background of the story's setting in India, comparisons to other Indian authors' works, and the political climate that led Roy to concentrate on social activism after her first and only novel.

I was thrilled by the intellectual stimulation of reading Dr. Mullaney's guide and wanted more.In addition to the many references and recommended reading that she includes in this guide, you can find more of her own writing through the Manchester Metropolitan University's English Research Institute.This one guide has opened new vistas for an old engineer used to reading non-fiction, sci fi, survival stories, poitical thrillers, and the like.I've always appreciated excellent writing whatever the genre, but now am once again a student.Such thorough research, clear thinking, and precise exposition is refreshing and infectious.

Wonderful work by A. Roy
I chose to read this book from a list of books in my women's study class 2 years ago in college.I found the story somewhat difficult to follow at first, so I ordered it on tape.I listened to the reader execute the story and once I was familiar with the characters, I read the rest myself.It was a truly moving story, that I feel, captured the feelings of people in that culture and time.I encourage people to read the book, and be patient while the story and characters unfold.

Very high quality reader's guide
This is the third of these guides that I have read, and they have all been very good so far. (The other two were about The Poisonwood Bible and The Shipping News.)This one follows the same basic idea. There is a chapter about the author, which is very interesting about Roy's upbringing and political background. And then there is a bigger chapter which looks at the book itself. It's intelligent without being difficult to read, and it's clear without being patronising or dumbed-down. This is a long way away from the Cliffs Notes I used to use back in school! But my favourite chapters in each of these books that I've read so far are the ones about the reviews that the novels got when they were published. It is just fascinating to see how the literary establishment reacted to this novel when it first appeared, and how some people picked up on the resonance of it immediately, and others seemed to miss the point. Anyway, I enjoyed this book very much, and I learned quite a lot about Indian literature in the process. ... Read more

Product Description
Attempts to interpret feminist issues from a cross-cultural point of view. By choosing two women, Indian novelists, who think and write as Anglophones, the author has seized upon a critical conjunction of four key issues: gender, caste, language, and tradition. ... Read more

Product Description
Contributed articles of critical appraisal on the God of small things by Arundhati Roy. ... Read more