While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know that contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized and George Bush is planning to go to war against Iraq.

We know that under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are hard at work. Still, many of us have dark moments of hopelessness and despair. As for corporate globalization’s glittering ambassadors–Enron, Bechtel, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen–where were they last year, and where are they now? And of course here in Brazil we must ask, Who was the president last year, and Who is it now? 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.įully annotated versions of all Roy's most recent essays, including her acclaimed Lannan Foundation lecture from September 2002, are included in War Talk.In India the movement against corporate globalization is gathering momentum and is poised to become the only real political force to counter religious fascism. 'If 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. And throughout her essays, Roy interrogates her own roles as 'writer' and 'activist.' Desperately working against the backdrop of the nuclear recklessness between her homeland and Pakistan, she calls into question the equation of nation and ethnicity. demands for war on Iraq, Roy confronts the call to militarism.

From the horrific programs against Muslims in Gujarat, India, to U.S. Her work highlights the global rise of religious and racial violence. War Talk collects new essays by this prolific writer. 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). 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. 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.

War Talk by Arundhati Roy