Power Politics

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).