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 New and devoted readers will find that these exchanges, add to their appreciation of Roy's previous work.

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."