Book review
The Algebra of Infinite Justice collects all the political writing Arundhati Roy has written over the years. In these essays, which have been extensively revised and updated for publication, she writes with passion and clarity about the great issues of the twenty-first century—nuclear war; environmental degradation; the folly of big dams; the dangers of unbridled globalization; and why terror cannot eliminate terrorism. Her essays go to the heart of India’s nuclear weapons programme, the multi-dam river valley project on the Narmada River in Central India, the inexorable advance of Corporate Globalization across the developing world, and the American government’s ‘new war against terror’—and demonstrate why, for the sake of all our collective future it is imperative we understand the issues at stake. In the essay, ‘The Ladies Have Feelings…’ she speaks of the writer’s role in society and why it becomes imperative sometimes to take sides.

About the author Born in 1961 in Bengal, Arundhati Roy grew up in Kerala. She trained as an architect at the Delhi School of Architecture, but became better known for her complex, scathing film scripts. She wrote and starred in In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones, and wrote the script for Pradip Kishen's Electric Moon. Media attention came when she spoke out in suapport of Phoolan Devi, who she felt had been exploited by Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen. The controversy escalated into a court case, after which she retired to private life to work on her first book, The God of Small Things, which was published in 1997. The half-million pound advance on this book, more than Vikram Seth's for A Suitable Boy, shot her to fame again