The perfect gift for the activists rebels and freedom fighters in your life... FROM THE
BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF MY SEDITIOUS HEART AND THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS A NEW AND
PRESSING DISPATCH FROM THE HEART OF THE CROWD AND THE SOLITUDE OF A WRITER'S DESK The chant of
'Azadi!' - Urdu for 'Freedom!' - is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what
Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically it also became the chant of millions on the
streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask
what lay between these two calls for Freedom - a chasm or a bridge? - the streets fell silent.
Not only in India but all over the world. The Coronavirus brought with it another more
terrible understanding of Azadi making a nonsense of international borders incarcerating
whole populations and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In
this series of electrifying essays Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of
freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language
public as well as private and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these
disturbing times. The pandemic she says is a portal between one world and another. For all
the illness and devastation it has left in its wake it is an invitation to the human race an
opportunity to imagine another world.
