This series of essays examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India. It looks closely at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism and neo-fascism simmer just under the surface of a country that projects itself as the world's largest democracy.

Beginning with the state-backed pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, Arundhati Roy writes about how the combination of Hindu Nationalism and India's Neo-liberal economic reforms, which began their journey together in the early 1990s, are now turning India into a police state. She describes the systematic marginalization of religious and ethnic minorities—Muslim, Christian, Adivasi and Dalit, the rise of terrorism and the massive scale of displacement and dispossession of the poor by predatory corporations. The collection ends with an account of the August 2008 uprising of the people of Kashmir against India's military occupation and an analysis of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai.

Listening to Grasshoppers tracks the fault lines that threaten to destroy India's precarious democracy and send shockwaves through the region and beyond.

Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things.

Arundhati Roy's profile page

"Written with fluid precision and acute rage.… Roy is unfailingly eloquent, sorting through a complicated network of special interests and partisan governmental groups to reveal nuances of corruption and oppression even to non-nationals." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"These radical, powerful broadsides, written in the white heat of anger, leave little doubt that this celebrated novelist intends to continue her role as India's fiercest agitator." —Kirkus Reviews

"Reading Arundhati Roy is how the peace movement arms itself. She turns our grief and rage into courage." —Naomi Klein

"Searing … Rarely has political writing been so raw … The kind of passionate and unguarded read that makes a writer serious enemies." —Scotland on Sunday