Arundhati Roy Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The God of Small Things (1997)
  2. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017)
  3. My Seditious Heart (2019)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. The Cost of Living (1999)
  2. Power Politics (2000)
  3. War Is Peace (2001)
  4. The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002)
  5. The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (2003)
  6. War Talk (2003)
  7. Come September (2004)
  8. An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2004)
  9. Public Power in the Age of Empire (2004)
  10. War With No End (With: China Miéville) (2007)
  11. The Shape of the Beast (2008)
  12. Listening To Grasshoppers (2009)
  13. Broken Republic (2011)
  14. Kashmir (With: Tariq Ali) (2011)
  15. Walking with the Comrades (2011)
  16. The Hanging of Afzal Guru and the Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament (2013)
  17. Capitalism (2014)
  18. The End of Imagination (2016)
  19. Things that Can and Cannot Be Said (2016)
  20. The Doctor and the Saint (2017)
  21. Azadi (2020)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Arundhati Roy Books Overview

The God of Small Things

‘They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. ‘The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers’ demonstration. Inside the car sit two egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale…
. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu who loves by night the man her children love by day, their blind grandmother, Mammachi who plays Handel on her violin, their beloved uncle Chacko Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom pincher, their enemy, Baby Kochamma ex nun and incumbent grandaunt, and the ghost of an imperial entomologist’s moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts. When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river ‘graygreen.’ With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it. The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.

The Cost of Living

From the bestselling author of The God of Small Things comes a scathing and passionate indictment of big government’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 family in India. Now she lavishes the same acrobatic language and fierce humanity on the future of her beloved country. In this spirited polemic, Roy dares to take on two of the great illusions of India’s progress: the massive dam projects that were supposed to haul this sprawling subcontinent into the modern age but which instead have displaced untold millions and the detonation of India’s first nuclear bomb, with all its attendant Faustian bargains. Merging her inimitable voice with a great moral outrage and imaginative sweep, Roy peels away the mask of democracy and prosperity to show the true costs hidden beneath. For those who have been mesmerized by her vision of India, here is a sketch, traced in fire, of its topsy turvy society, where the lives of the many are sacrificed for the comforts of the few.

Power Politics

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.

The Algebra of Infinite Justice

A few weeks after India detonated a thermonuclear device in 1998, Arundhati Roy wrote the essay ‘The End of Imagination’, in which she said: ‘My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing.’ The essay, as have all its successors, attracted worldwide attention, debate and acclaim. In the years since, the essays she has published in magazines and newspapers worldwide have reinforced an impression of a writer in the modern world prepared to use her fame and gifts in the cause of the voiceless and the overlooked. Those essays are gathered together here.

The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile

A skillful interviewer can reveal aspects of a writer’s voice in simple yet telling ways. 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 Globalizing Dissent: Converations with Arundhati Roy. New and devoted readers will find that these exchanges, recorded between 2001 and 2003, add to their appreciation of Roy s previous work. 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. Globalizing Dissent 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.

War Talk

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.

Come September

In this acclaimed Lannan foundation lecture from September 2002, Roy speaks poetically to power on the US War on Terror, globalization, the misuses of nationalism, and the growing chasm between the rich and poor. With lyricism and passion, Roy combines her literary talents and encyclopedic knowledge to expose injustice and provide hope for a future world. ‘Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.’ From the CDArundhati Roy is an outspoken critic of globalization and American influence. She has authored four books, including The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize. This summer, she will accept the Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom.

An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire

Just in time for the elections, Arundhati Roy offers us this lucid briefing on what the Bush administration really means when it talks about compassionate conservativism and the war on terror. Roy has characteristic fun in these essays, skewering the hypocrisy of the more democratic than thou clan. But above all, she aims to remind us that we hold the essence of power and the foundation of genuine democracy the power of the people to counter their self appointed leaders tyranny. First delivered as fiery speeches to sold out crowds, together these essays are a call to arms against the apocalyptic apparatus of the American empire. Focusing on the disastrous US occupation of Iraq, Roy urges us to recognize and apply the scope of our power, exhorting US dockworkers to refuse to load materials war bound, reservists to reject their call ups, activists to organize boycotts of Halliburton, and citizens of other nations to collectively resist being deputized as janitor soldiers to clear away the detritus of the US invasion. Roy’s Guide to Empire also offers us sharp theoretical tools for understanding the New American Empire a dangerous paradigm, Roy argues here, that is entirely distinct from the imperialism of the British or even the New World Order of George Bush, the elder. She examines how resistance movements build power, using examples of nonviolent organizing in South Africa, India, and the United States. Deftly drawing the thread through ostensibly disconnected issues and arenas, Roy pays particular attention to the parallels between globalization in India, the devastation in Iraq, and the deplorable conditions many African Americans, in particular, must still confront. With Roy as our guide, we may not be able to relax from the Sisyphean task of stopping the U.S. juggernaut, but at least we are assured that the struggle for global justice is fortified by Roy s hard edged brilliance.

Public Power in the Age of Empire

In her major address to the 99th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association on August 16, 2004, ‘Public Power in the Age of Empire,’ broadcast nationally on C Span Book TV and on Democracy Now! and Alternative Radio, writer Arundhati Roy brilliantly examines the limits to democracy in the world today. 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 meaningful alternatives 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.

War With No End (With: China Miéville)

John Berger, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Joe Sacco and others examine the consequences of the War on Terror. On October 7th 2001, US led forces invaded Afghanistan, marking the start of George Bush and Tony Blair’s War on Terror. Six years on, where have the policies of Bush and Blair left us? Bringing together some of the finest contemporary writers, this wide ranging anthology, from reportage and faction to fiction, explores the impact of this ‘long war throughout the world, from Palestine to Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the curtailment of civil liberties and manipulation of public opinion. Published in conjunction with Stop the War coalition and United for Peace and Justice, War With No End provides an urgent, necessary reflection on the causes and consequences of the ideological War on Terror.

Listening To Grasshoppers

‘Gorgeously wrought…
pitch perfect prose…
In language of terrible beauty, she takes India’s everyday tragedies and reminds us to be outraged all over again.’ Time Magazine

Combining fierce conviction, deft political analysis, and beautiful writing, this is the essential new book from Arundhati Roy.

This series of essays examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India. It looks closely at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism, and neo fascism simmer just under the surface of a country that projects itself as the world’s largest democracy.

Roy writes about how the combination of Hindu Nationalism and India’s neo liberal economic reforms, which began their journey together in the early 1990s, are now 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’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’s precarious democracy and send shockwaves through the region and beyond.

Praise for Field Notes on Democracy:

‘In her searing account of the actual practice of the world’s largest democracy, Arundhati Roy calls for ‘factual precision’ alongside of the ‘real precision of poetry.’ Remarkably, she combines those achievements to a degree that few can hope to approach. Roy shows in painful detail how the beneficiaries of the highly admired 10 percent growth rate are enjoying a ‘new secessionism,’ leaving the great majority languishing in poverty and despair, with malnutrition reaching the same levels as sub Saharan Africa. As surveillance and state terror extend, all under the guise of flourishing democracy, India is becoming ‘a nation waiting to be accused,’ a nation where a confession extracted under torture can lead to the brink of nuclear war, and where ‘fascism’s firm footprint has appeared’ in ways reminiscent of the early years of Na*zism. Most chilling of all is that much of the grim portrait is all too familiar in the West. Roy asks whether our shriveled forms of democracy will be ‘the endgame of the human race’ and shows vividly why this is a prospect not to be lightly dismissed.’ Noam Chomsky

‘After so much celebratory salesmanship about India the ’emerging market,’ Roy draws us into India the actual country, peeling away the gloss until we are confronted with perhaps the most challenging question of our time: who and what are we willing to sacrifice in the name of development? Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.’
Naomi Klein

‘The notion of Democracy and the pleading for human compassion first came together in Sophocles and the Greek tragedies. More than two thousand years later we live under an economic world tyranny of unprecedented brutality, which depends upon the systematic abuse of words like Democracy or Progress. Arundhati Roy, the direct descendant of Antigone, resists and denounces all tyrannies, pleads for their victims, and unflinchingly questions the tragic. Reflect with her on the answers she receives from the political world today.’ John Berger

Arundhati Roy is a world renowned Indian author and global justice activist. From her celebrated Booker Prize winning novel The God of Small Things to her prolific output of writing on topics ranging from climate change to war, the perils of free market development in India, and the defense of the poor, Roy’s voice has become indispensable to millions seeking a better world.

Kashmir (With: Tariq Ali)

Leading international voices condemn the brutalities of the Kashmir occupation. At home, the Kashmiri people’s ongoing quest for justice and self determination is as much ignored by their venal politicians as it is rejected by Pakistan. Internationally, their struggle is forgotten, as the West refuses to bring pressure to bear on its regional ally India. Kashmir: The Case for Freedom is an impassioned attempt to redress this imbalance and to fill the gap in our moral imagination. Covering Kashmir s past and present and the occupation s causes and consequences, the authors issue a clarion call for the withdrawal of Indian troops and for Kashmir s right to self determination.

The End of Imagination

Critical analysis on India’s nuclear policy.

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