In this upcoming book, The Company of Violent Men – Stories from the bloody fault lines of the subcontinent, Siddharthya Roy discusses the detailed accounts of violent and political conflicts in South Asia.
Roy highlights the plight of the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, where the most rampant things they face are human trafficking and drugs. He writes about Chhattisgarh, where Maoist rebels and the Indian state are at war for half a century. The investigative journalist further discusses the enduring conflict zone of Kashmir, which is caught between India and Pakistan.
The book highlights the anecdotes of everyday brutality, injustice, and exploitation suffered by the general public.
Published by Penguin India, ‘The Company of Violent Men’ by Siddharthya Roy will be released on 2 October on SoftCover, ThePrint’s online venue to launch non-fiction books.
The book has multiple stories, from a little girl who lost her childhood and became a genocide survivor to a suicide bomber who has disastrous dreams.
As the writer draws attention towards the rich and complex portraits of middlemen, refugees, and insurgents in the book, he also examines his own life and career with uncompromising honesty — evolving as a journalist through the stories of these people.
This book is a combination of memoir and reportage, which consist of war dispatches that allow the readers to bear witness to what the reporter saw on the field when he looked beyond the burqa and the beard. Roy makes it easy for the readers to look through the stories of those people whom he met on the field and saw beyond the olive green of fighters and spoke to the humans who live the situations we can’t imagine to witness.
Siddharthya Roy is an engineer by training and worked as a programmer before turning into an independent investigative journalist. He also bagged a Pulitzer Grant for conflict reporting in the year 2018.
The book garnered praise from several authors and journalists. “A “tranquil evening” in Dhaka shattered by an unexpected “bloodbath” ignites a relentless quest for answers that reads like a thriller. With each page, you’ll find yourself deeper in a web of intrigue, danger and revelation, as Roy’s fierce dedication to uncovering the truth keeps you reading–” said John B. Judis, journalist and author.
Further, Mukund Padmanabhan, former editor, The Hindu, writes – ‘A fascinating and free-flowing mix of reportage, memoir and meditations on investigative journalism, The Company of Violent Men is a gritty and granular exploration of faith, extremism and primordial loyalties. What sets this book apart is a singular and fiercely independent voice that privileges observation above everything else— Roy’s refreshing approach is not weighed down by preconception, not tethered to political prejudice and not hewn, as many such works are today, from a predictable and deadening ideological bloc’.
‘Roy is that fearless journalist who risks not only interviewing the “violent men” (and women) of the title but telling the nuanced political and personal stories that drive militancy in South Asia as they are. If you’ve longed for a book explaining terrorism and conflict that goes beyond simplistic tropes of “good vs evil”, start here’—said Shannon Tiezzi, editor-in-chief, thediplomat.com.
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