From Booklist
Indian writer Roy's debut novel, The God of Small Things (1997), met with resounding critical acclaim and won the Booker Prize, but this writer of conscience has turned her attention to the real world ever since, turning herself into an electrifying political essayist. In her third volume of nonfiction, she valiantly addresses questions of power and its abuse, and powerlessness and its transformation via dissent and activism into a force for positive change. Roy dissects her country's violent religious conflicts, celebrates and mourns the seemingly lost legacy of Gandhi, and condemns India's gargantuan and environmentally unsound hydroelectric dam projects and the concomitant displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. She also discusses with invaluable clarity the mess in the Middle East, and presents razor-sharp interpretations of the U.S. government's foreign policy and the insidious influence of mega-corporations. So fluent is her prose, so keen her understanding of global politics, and so resonant her objections to nuclear weapons, assaults against the environment, and the endless suffering of the poor that her essay are as uplifting as they are galvanizing. Donna Seaman
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Book Description
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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Roy's new essay collection, War Talk, highlights the global rise of militarism and religious and racial violence. Against the backdrop of nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, the horrific massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, and U.S. demands for an ever-expanding war on terror, she calls into question the equation of nation and ethnicity.

SYNOPSIS