The Shape of the Beast
The Shape of the Beast: Conversations with Arundhati Roy (2008) is a collection of fourteen interviews of Indian author Arundhati Roy, conducted between January 2001 and March 2008. In these interviews, Roy speaks, among other things, about people displaced by dams and industry, the genocide in Gujarat, Maoist rebels, the Kashmir issue and American imperialism. In the final interview, Roy speaks about herself as a person, a writer and a celebrity. Roy writes in the book's preface: "These interviews were a flexible way of thinking aloud, of exploring idea, personal As well as political , without having to nail them down with an artificially structured cohesion and fit them into an unassailable grand thesis. This book was born and raised in that amorphous, luminal space – somewhere between the spoken and the written word." Five of the fourteen conversations are with David Barsamian, an American radio broadcaster, writer, and the founder and director of Colorado-based syndicated weekly talk program "Alternative Radio". In 2004, Barsamian and Roy had co-authored a similar book "The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy". Other interviewers include N. Ram of "The Hindu", Shoma Chaudhury of "Tehelka" and  Anthony Armove of "International Socialist Review". Reviews. Priscilla Jebaraj of "The Hindu" notes that "The Shape of the Beast" is an exercise in connecting the many dots that she first started plotting over a decade ago in "The God of Small Things"." "By compiling those [previously published] interviews together, the book documents the process of taking stock — of both past and future — and in typical Roy fashion, it looks at national and international developments through the lens of personal passion, providing adequate fodder for both the fan and the political scientist." Sharanya Manivannan wrote in "The New Indian Express": "The  Beast in question is, naturally, a political animal. In these interviews, Roy takes on, in her penetratingly poetic manner, the hegemonies of state, religion, imperialism, corporate entities and social constructs. All of them have been published before, so in themselves they say nothing new. But collected together they shed light not so much on the nature of the Beasts that democracy, egalitarianism and sheer goodness are up against, but on the woman who dares to outline their shapes." John Andrews of the South African magazine "Amandla!" wrote: "Unabashedly political, this is also a deeply personal collection that talks about the  necessity of taking a stand and about the dilemma of guarding the private space necessary for writing in a world that demands urgent, unequivocal intervention."