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Field Notes On Democracy: Listening To Grasshoppers (2000)

by Arundhati Roy(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0241144620 (ISBN13: 9780241144626)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Hamish Hamilton Canada

review 1: "Its understandable that a writer writes about a place where he was born, as he is the most apt person to assess about the situations and circumstances prevailing at that place. However, it becomes disheartening, when he manages to manipulate data and facts, bundled with exaggerated and biased point of view, especially when he covers his own views and depicts them as view of the masses. It creates a disaster". This is the most outrageously developed book by Arundhati Roy, desperately seeking an opportunity to register a mark through the facts and figures distortingly unreal. Her views are completely backed by anger (probably about something which she thinks represents "her people" who are totally unheard in India). Could have been written in a better way, had she critisize... mored the system in India in general rather than darting at just one or two political parties.
review 2: Powerful writing. As much as I prefer that Arundhati write fiction, her current job as a "literary crusader" if she can be called that is also leading to interesting results. I am aware of the criticisms of her grandiloquent essays ("Gandhians with guns" and erroneous assumptions amongst other things) but without a doubt they are the most compelling pieces of writing you will ever read. Arundhati has found that rare space where few tread (Maybe Sainath; but he is more journalist than writer); the marrying of high art with journalistic fervour. Roy's writing is a force to reckon with as it will seek to convert you to her cause not just through raw data and assumptions but also through emotional appeal that borders on manipulation (I mean this in a good way). So when things are aligned in the right way, Roy is unstoppable. If not, she is still thought provoking. less

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