Press releases

 

Dec 16 2020
14:59

The Indian writer will talk in the lecture series In Transit|ion. 

Arundhati Roy to read at Goethe University

On 22 January, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy will be the featured guest speaker in the renowned "In Transit|ion" lecture series at Goethe University Frankfurt. The series is an international and transdisciplinary programme offered by the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. In the Zoom event:

"The syntax of everyday injustice" on 22.01.2021
10:00h - 12:00h CET (Central European Time)
14:30h - 16:30h IST (India Standard Time)

Roy will read from her new work, forms the basis for the subsequent discussion, moderated by Dr. Pavan Malreddy, research associate at the Institute of English and American Studies. The event will be held in English. 

Arundhati Roy is the author of the award-winning bestseller "The God of Small Things," published in 1997, in which she writes of the connections between the caste system, class society, capitalism and imperialism. In the years between the publication of her first and second critically acclaimed novel, which appeared two decades later, she mainly wrote literary and political essays and confronted Indian society on a variety of topics: religious persecution, economic inequalities, caste and class hierarchies, the exploitation of natural resources and the resulting expropriation of small farmers in the name of development.

Her extensive non-fiction work including "The Politics of Power," and "From the Workshop of Democracy," and her second novel "The Ministry of Extreme Happiness" explain how capitalism and privatisation undermine democracy, destroy the environment and irreversibly accelerate climate change. Both her novels and her non-fiction work are the subject of lively, sometimes heated, scientific debates both inside and outside India. Her works are read today in more than forty languages.

Roy is an outspoken critic of communalism and majoritarianism in Indian politics. Her concise analysis of grassroots fascism and the ideological breeding ground it needs to flourish in Indian society and elsewhere forms the basis of her most recent work "Azadi - Freedom, Fascism, Fiction" (2020).

The lecture series "In Transit|ion - Frankfurt Lectures in Literary and Cultural Studies" is an international and transdisciplinary series organised by the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. Twice a semester, leading writers and scholars from the English-speaking world present their work in the fields of American Studies, English Studies and Anglophone Literatures and Cultures. Since its inception in 2016, the series has featured speakers from top international universities in Great Britain (Oxford, Cambridge), the U.S. (Columbia, Chicago), Australia (Monash University) and India (North Bengal).

Please register for the event by e-mail: pavanmalreddy@protonmail.com

Further information:
Dr. Pavan Malreddy, New English Literatures and Cultures (NELK) &
Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform (FMSP)
Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
malreddy@em.uni-frankfurt.de; https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/72041247/In_Transition