Arundhati Roy on How to Survive in a “Culture of Fear”
September 04, 2025 at 09:01PMThere is a moment of palpable tension at the center of Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s interview with Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize-winning author of The God of Small Things. Garcia-Navarro asks Roy a series of questions about her persecution in India, including threats of arrest and the banning of her book, Azadi, in Kashmir. Roy grows circumspect; the interview seems, briefly, to teeter. Then the tension breaks, and Roy expands on the value of communication under authoritarian rule. It’s a stirring conclusion, and a terribly timely reminder of the power of a well-told story.
The reason that I don’t talk about it is because I would much rather write what I want to write than have some controversy about something you say off the cuff. It’s like they’re always trying to trip people up and trying to prevent you from thinking clearly. This culture of fear is everywhere here. People are arrested for things they say on Facebook, on Twitter, or what they don’t say. In the U.S., it seems new to you, but we have been living with this, and it’s increasingly becoming normalized. It’s a very disturbing situation, especially for Muslims, where it doesn’t stop with just court cases and jail. It goes on to lynching and murder and social boycotts and economic boycotts and homes being bulldozed. You meet people who have stories that you can’t look away from.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/09/04/arundhati-roy-interview/
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