Bookended by her two extraordinary novels, The God of Small Things (1997) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), My Seditious Heart collects the work of a two-decade period when Arundhati Roy devoted herself to the political essay as a way of opening up space for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile environment.
Radical and superbly readable, the essays speak in a voice of unique spirit, marked by compassion, clarity, and courage. Roy offers a powerful defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites.
In constant conversation with the themes and settings of her novels, the essays form a near-unbroken memoir of Arundhati Roy's journey as both a writer and a citizen, of both India and the world, from "The End of Imagination," which begins this book, to "My Seditious Heart," with which it ends.
"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."
"Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness. And in these extraordinary essays-which are clarions for justice, for witness, for a true humanity."
"Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays."
"Arundhati Roy is one of the few great revolutionary intellectuals in our time…Courageous, visionary, and erudite."
"Arundhati Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time."
"The world has never had to face such global confusion. Only in facing it can we make sense of what we have to do. And this is precisely what Arundhati Roy does."
