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The Architecture of Modern Empire
Conversations with David Barsamian
A revelatory and wide-ranging series of interviews with award-winning writer Arundhati Roy, touching on US empire, Indian nationalism, a writer’s work, and more.

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 here by David Barsamian.

This newly reissued and expanded edition, featuring interviews from 2001 to 2022 and a moving foreword by Naomi Klein, explores Roy’s evolving political thought and commitments across the tumultuous twenty-first entry. 

The Architecture of Modern Empire is a searing reckoning with the mechanics of power, in all its forms, and the role of imagination and creative expression in envisioning a radically different world.
Reviews
  • "Again and again, Arundhati has used her gifts as a novelist and trained architect to help us visualize the invisible architecture of modern empire. Crucially, she has helped us to understand how powerful interests that seem to be in conflict—the nation state vs. corporate globalization; religious fundamentalism vs. US capitalism—actually serve to strengthen and protect each other, and join forces to lay waste to democracy.” —Naomi Klein, from the Foreword

    "[Arundhati Roy's] fires keep burning all the way through The Architecture of Modern Empire, whether she’s talking in Delhi or Las Vegas, at Berkeley High School or in the back seat of a car driving across Boston. Sometimes she laughs, sometimes she rages, sometimes both."The Guardian

Other books by David Barsamian and Arundhati Roy