> I agree that Roy's "analysis" is nothing special, and that her facile
> anticommunism (including most prominently in "The God of Small Things") is
> just the sort of stance that appeals to leftists in the imperialist
> countries who prize their own purity over the nitty-gritty struggle for
> power.
Hmm, I'm in the process of departing forever from the literature biz (greener pastures await on Planet Video), but I have to say that Roy is a gifted writer and an inspired polemicist, who has done some fine work with the Narmada movement. Her novel is one of the tremendous novels of the 1990s, which isn't anti-communist but rather deeply critical of the inability of the mainstream Indian Left to confront its internalized patriarchy. No, she doesn't have a kitbag of solutions, but then, that's not the job of artists.
-- DRR