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My Seditious Heart

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About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of My Seditious Heart by Arundhati Roy, read by Tania Rodrigues.

My Seditious Heart collects the work of a two-decade period when Arundhati Roy devoted herself to the political essay as a way of opening up space for justice, rights and freedoms in an increasingly hostile environment. Taken together, the essays speak in a uniquely spirited voice, marked by compassion, clarity and courage. Radical and superbly readable, they speak always in defence of the collective, of the individual and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military and governmental elites.

In constant conversation with the themes and settings of her novels, the essays form a near-unbroken memoir of Arundhati Roy's journey as both a writer and a citizen, of both India and the world, from 'The End of Imagination', which begins this book, to 'My Seditious Heart', with which it ends.

 Essays Freedom & Security Politics & Government Iran Middle East Imperialism Socialism Nonfiction Africa Military Capitalism Latin American War Social justice Self-Determination Russia

Critic reviews

'every page gifts you her far seeing, her calm and intelligent urgency, the wisdom and relief of her articulacy, her courage'
Arundhati Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time (Naomi Klein)
Arundhati Roy calls for 'factual precision' alongside of the 'real precision of poetry.' Remarkably, she combines those achievements to a degree that few can hope to approach (Noam Chomsky)
Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays (Howard Zinn)
The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating
Arundhati Roy is one of the few great revolutionary intellectuals in our time . . . courageous, visionary, and erudite (Cornel West)
Her incomparable divining rod picks up the cries of the despised and the oppressed in the most remote corners of the globe; it even picks up the cries of rivers and fish. With an unfailing charm and wit that makes her writing constantly enlivening to read, her analysis of our grotesque world is savagely clear, and yet her anger never obscures her awareness that beauty, joy, and pleasure can potentially be part of the life of human beings (Wallace Shawn)
Roy is of course a consummate storyteller...[the essays] are thick with intelligence and firmly bolstered with fact.
An author worth waiting two decades for
A passionate political masterpiece'
All stars
Most relevant
The intensity of Arundhati Roy's intelligence doesn't just illuminate the injustices of indian and global politics, but also provides a clear picture of what democracy is when it's captured by corporate interests and religious-nationalist ideology.

Brilliant essays, brilliantly read.

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Thank you Arundhati Roy for the work that you do. The subjects of your essays were new to me but highlighted the scale of the corruption in India: from the true opinions of Gandhi, disastrous dam projects, the massacre of Muslims, to learning of the struggles that Ambedkar fought for. A long listen, but well worth using a credit for. Thank you to Tania Rodrigues for the mammoth effort in reading this immense volume. Despite the cruel nature of the essays, the voice was soothing.

Eye opening

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A window on the world-in Roy’s inimitable prose. It’s worth the investment of time.

Mind changing

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