Capitalism - by Arundhati Roy (Paperback)

About the Book

With anger and compassion, Roy exposes the sordid underbelly and dark inhumanity of capitalism in India and around the globe.

Book Synopsis

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 globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.

Review Quotes

Capitalism feels like straight reportage from the front lines of a war. In every part of the world, the rich few keep getting richer on the backs of a population that continues to work harder and grow poorer for it. And Roy keeps sending these furious, intelligent bulletins to alert us to what's going on. More people than ever are listening to her." --The Stranger

Praise for Arundhati Roy's Field Notes on Democracy:

"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

"In her searing account, 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

"The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating." --The New York Times Book Review

"An electrifying political essayist... 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 essays are as uplifting as they are galvanizing." --Booklist

Capitalism feels like straight reportage from the front lines of a war. In every part of the world, the rich few keep getting richer on the backs of a population that continues to work harder and grow poorer for it. And Roy keeps sending these furious, intelligent bulletins to alert us to what's going on. More people than ever are listening to her." --The Stranger

Praise for Arundhati Roy's Field Notes on Democracy:

"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

"In her searing account, 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

"The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating." --The New York Times Book Review

"An electrifying political essayist... 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 essays are as uplifting as they are galvanizing." --Booklist

About the Author

Arundhati Roy studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives. She is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel has been translated into forty languages worldwide. She has written several non-fiction books, including Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers and Capitalism: A Ghost Story, published by Haymarket Books.