Arundhati Roy: Back In the U.S.A.

AlterNet: Arundhati Roy: Back In the U.S.A.: "Author/activist Arundhati Roy discusses President Bush's embarrassing trip to India, the war in Iraq, and why she avoids America.

Amy Goodman: Today, we spend the hour with acclaimed author and activist Arundhati Roy. Her first novel, The God of Small Things, was awarded the Booker Prize in 1997. Since then, Roy has devoted herself to political writing and activism. In India, she is involved in the movement opposing hydroelectric dam projects that have displaced thousands of people. In 2002, she was convicted of contempt of court in New Delhi for accusing the court of attempting to silence protest against the Narmada Dam project. She received a symbolic one-day prison sentence.

She has also been a vocal opponent of the Indian government's nuclear weapons program, as she is of all nuclear programs around the world. Arundhati Roy has also become known across the globe for her powerful political essays. In June of 2005, she served as chair of the Jury of Conscience at the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. "