Review: Azadi

Azadi by Arundhati Roy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Azadi is an urgent book, that much is immediately obvious. Arundhati Roy is eloquent, driving home the points she makes across the essays and talks she has pulled together into an important collection. Her novels are lens through which she looks at politics, current affairs, and the future. She critiques, she notes, she observes, and then she drives her points home with confident bluntness without pulled punches.

In all this, she is what you would expect. The problem is simply the nature of such a collection. Inevitably, things get repeated. Over and over. And while that drives the points even further home, it makes the reading a little bit tough. A little repetitive. A little difficult to pull through the same points again and again. She didn't write these as a set, so judging them as a set feels unfair. But I did read them as a set, and as a set they just don't work as well.

The writing itself is fine. Not especially strong or clear, not obscured under indecipherable language. It serves its purpose, and nothing more.

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