3.75 stars.

I love Arundhati’s unwavering resolve in writing about the often neglected issues of India. Her writing has landed her in legal problems and social boycotts, yet she continues to fight. Her writing is compelling, educating and provoking. Never one to mince words, she paints an accurate albeit grim picture.

Azadi is a collection of nine enlightening speeches and essays. Her writing is wonderful but here’s my problem : it contains an unnecessary and monstrous amount of information about her two novels. Literal passages were copied where they weren’t needed, and it ruined the whole essence of the point she was actually making. Any issue she was stating had to referenced with characters and plots from her novels, which was an eye-sore. Towards the end, I got so fed up that I skipped entire paragraphs.

Secondly, a lot of the same information is written verbatim across essays. I understand this was necessary when she was giving individual speeches or writing separate essays, but this should really have been edited out from the book. The book would have been a much better read had it been freed of these redundant and repetitive parts, and condensed by a third.
It’s a shame because the points she makes are quite compelling but end up being overpowered by the minutiae.

Would I recommend this book? Absolutely.
Would I also recommend that you skim through about a third of the book? Absolutely.