Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come. He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair Estha and Rahel, seven-year-old twins, are growing up amidst vats of banana jam, mountains of peppercorns and scenes of political turbulence in Kerala. But when their beautiful young cousin Sophie arrives, their world is irrevocably shaken. An illicit liaison and tragedies both accidental and intentional expose things that lurk unsaid, in a country drifting dangerously towards unrest. Winner of the Booker Prize, The God of Small Things is lush, lyrical and unnerving: a literary sensation and a modern classic. 'A voice of breathtaking beauty... a masterpiece' Observer

“The God of Small Things explores the tragic fate of a family which ‘tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how.” They are an eclectic mix: grandmother Mammachi; her spoilt Anglophile son, Chacko; her daughter Ammu; Ammu’s inseparable twins Estha and Rahel; and Baby Kochamma, grand aunt, determined to spread the bitter seeds of her early disappointment in love. From its mesmerising opening sequence, it is clear that we are in the grip of a delicious new voice … a voice of breathtaking beauty. The God of Small Things achieves genuine, tragic resonance. It is, indeed, a masterpiece.”
CHRISTINA PATTERSON, 'Observer'

“The joy of The God of Small Things is that it appeals equally to the head and the heart. It is clever and complex, yet it makes one laugh, and finally, moves one to tears. A masterpiece, utterly exceptional.”
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, 'Harpers & Queen'

“Roy peels away the layers of the mysteries with such delicate cunning, such a dazzlingly adroit shuffle of accumulating revelations that to discuss the plot would be to violate it. Like a devotionally built temple, The God of Small Things builds a massive interlocking structure of fine, intensely felt details. A novel of real ambition must invent its own language, and this one does.”
JOHN UPDIKE, 'New Yorker'

“A compelling story which somehow marries the deepest, smallest personal emotions with an epic narrative. There were times I had to stop reading this novel because I feared so much for the characters, or I had to re read a phrase or a page to memorise its grace.”
MEERA SYAL, 'Daily Express'

“It is rare to find a book that so effectively cuts through the clothes of nationality, caste and religion to reveal the bare bones of humanity. A sensational novel.”
CLAIRE SCOBIE, 'Daily Telegraph'

FROM THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF MY SEDITIOUS HEART AND THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS, A NEW AND PRESSING DISPATCH FROM THE HEART OF THE CROWD AND THE SOLITUDE OF A WRITER'S DESK The chant of 'Azadi!' - Urdu for 'Freedom!' - is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom - a chasm or a bridge? - the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The Coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE 2018 THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE and THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'At magic hour; when the sun has gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unhinge themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke...' So begins The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy's incredible follow-up to The God of Small Things. We meet Anjum, who used to be Aftab, who runs a guest-house in an Old Delhi graveyard and gathers around her the lost, the broken and the cast out. We meet Tilo, an architect, who although she is loved by three men, lives in a 'country of her own skin' . When Tilo claims an abandoned baby as her own, her destiny and that of Anjum become entangled as a tale that sweeps across the years and a teeming continent takes flight... 'A sprawling kaleidoscopic fable' Guardian, Books of the Year 'Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first' Financial Times 'A great tempest of a novel... which will leave you awed by the heat of its anger and the depth of its compassion' Washington Post

'A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce love - of the land, the ocean, the elders and the ancestors - warms the heart and moves the spirit.' - Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon's No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples. Aguon beautifully weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Bearing witness and reckoning with the challenges of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness. A powerful and bold new voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific who are fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites and obtain justice for generations of harm. In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy and triumph, and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world.

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."

B.R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. It offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition in "The Doctor and the Saint," examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar's anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.

Praise for Arundhati Roy: "Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays." --Howard Zinn "Arundhati Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time." --Naomi Klein "The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating." --The New York Times Book Review Bookended by her two award-winning 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 world. Taken together, the essays speak in a voice of unique spirit, marked by compassion, clarity, and courage. Radical and superbly readable, they speak always in 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. Arundhati Roy studied architecture in New Delhi where she now lives. She is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. She has written several nonfiction books, including Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Walking with the Comrades, Things That Can and Cannot Be Said (with John Cusack), and The End of Imagination. She is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.

Cultural Writing. "Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb)"--Arundhati Roy, from the DVD. Arundhati Roy breaks it all down in two remarkable lectures, and two lively discussions with Howard Zinn, combined in this 3-hour DVD. Included is her renowned speech delivered in New York City's Riverside Church, entitled "Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy." Addressing a sold-out crowd, Roy gives a fiery critique of the "New American Empire" and emphatically challenges Americans to reclaim democracy and resist the U.S. war machine.

To best understand and address the inequality in India today, Arundhati Roy insists we must examine both the political development and influence of M. K. Gandhi and why B. R. Ambedkar's brilliant challenge to his near-divine status was suppressed by India's elite. In Roy's analysis, we see that Ambedkar's fight for justice was systematically sidelined in favor of policies that reinforced caste, resulting in the current nation of India: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system. This book situates Ambedkar's arguments in their vital historical context-- namely, as an extended public political debate with Mohandas Gandhi. "For more than half a century--throughout his adult life--[Gandhi's] pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, untouchables and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting," writes Roy. "His refusal to allow working-class people and untouchables to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives remained consistent too." In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy exposes some uncomfortable, controversial, and even surprising truths about the political thought and career of India's most famous and most revered figure. In doing so she makes the case for why Ambedkar's revolutionary intellectual achievements must be resurrected, not only in India but throughout the world. "Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness." --Junot Diaz "The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart." --Alice Walker

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 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 Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.--Naomi Klein Now in paperback, with a new introduction by the author discussing the election of India's new prime minister Narendra Modi. 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. 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. Field Notes on Democracy tracks the fault-lines that threaten to destroy India's precarious democracy and send shockwaves through the region and beyond. 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.

In Capitalism: A Ghost Story, best-selling writer Arundhati Roy examines the dark side of Indian democracy-a nation of 1.2 billion, where the country's 100 richest people own assets worth one quarter of India's gross domestic product. Ferocious and clear-sighted, this is a searing portrait of a nation haunted by ghosts: the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt; the hundreds of millions who live on less than two dollars a day. It is the story of how the largest democracy in the world, with over 800 million voting in the last election, answers to the demands of globalized capitalism, subjecting millions of people to inequality and exploitation. Roy shows how the mega-corporations, modern robber barons plundering India's natural resources, use brute force, as well as a wide range of NGOs and foundations, to sway government and policy making in India.

This title is published on the 6th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of the 'War on Terror', John Berger, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Joe Sacco and others examine the consequences. 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, it provides an urgent, necessary reflection on the causes and consequences of the ideological War on Terror.

Twenty years, a thousand pages, and now a single beautiful edition of Arundhati Roy's complete non-fiction. 'Arundhati Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time' Naomi Klein '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. She makes sense of what we have to do. Thereby offering an example. An example of what? Of being fully alive in our world, such as it is, and of getting close to and listening to those for whom this world has become intolerable' John Berger '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' Noam Chomsky 'Unflinching emotional as well as political intelligence... Lucid and probing insights on a range of matters, from crony capitalism and environmental depredation to the perils of nationalism and, in her most recent work, the insidiousness of the Hindu caste system. In an age of intellectual logrolling and mass-manufactured infotainment, she continues to offer bracing ways of seeing, thinking and feeling' TIME magazine 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. Taken together, these essays trace her twenty year journey from the Booker Prize-winning The God of Small Things to the extraordinary The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: a journey marked by compassion, clarity and courage. Radical and readable, they speak always in defence 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.

From the poisoned rivers, barren wells and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country's 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India's gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India and shows how the demands of globalised capitalism have subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.From celebration Booker Prize-winning author, Arundhati Roy.

'A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce love - of the land, the ocean, the elders and the ancestors - warms the heart and moves the spirit.' - Alice Walker Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon's No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples. Aguon beautifully weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Bearing witness and reckoning with the challenges of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness. A powerful and bold new voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific who are fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites and obtain justice for generations of harm. In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy and triumph, and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world.

Kashmir is one of the most protracted and bloody occupations in the world-and one of the most ignored. Under an Indian military rule that, at half a million strong, exceeds the total number of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, freedom of speech is non-existent, and human- rights abuses and atrocities are routinely visited on its Muslim-majority population. In the last two decades alone, over seventy thousand people have died. Ignored by its own corrupt politicians, abandoned by Pakistan and the West, which refuses to bring pressure to bear on its regional ally, India, the Kashmiri people's ongoing quest for justice and self- determination continues to be brutally suppressed. Exploring the causes and consequences of the occupation, Kashmir: The Case for Freedom is a passionate call for the end of occupation, and for the right of self- determination for the Kashmiri people.

The End of Imagination brings together five of Arundhati Roy's acclaimed books of essays into one comprehensive volume for the first time and features a new introduction by the author. This new collection begins with her pathbreaking book The Cost of Living--published soon after she won the Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things--in which she forcefully condemned India's nuclear tests and its construction of enormous dam projects that continue to displace countless people from their homes and communities. The End of Imagination also includes her nonfiction works Power Politics, War Talk, Public Power in the Age of Empire, and An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, which include her widely circulated and inspiring writings on the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the need to confront corporate power, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions globally.