An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire.(books)(Book Review)

An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

By Arundhati Roy (South End Press, 2004)

Arundhati Roy pulls no punches. She is not the sort to beat around the bush. Roy's aim, when she speaks to packed audiences or writes her incisive essays, is a straightforward one: to expose injustice, to explain why this or that indignity is being visited upon this or that community, and then to exhort us to mobilize, unite and fight back.

It's an approach that works.

In the seven short years since the publication of Roy's award-winning novel The God of Small Things, the Indian writer, essayist and activist has become a widely-admired left luminary, an unwavering, high-profile champion of the dispossessed and the marginalized.

Just how has Roy managed to attract this kind of respect and acclaim? An answer clearly emerges from the pages of her latest book, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. It's a collection of seven talks and essays delivered or published over a thirteen-month period, from March 2003 to April 2004. Roy's best weapons are her words, and to read her--and ideally hear her speak--is to understand the power and importance of words and ideas to the evolving global justice movement.

Many of the points elaborated in Roy's book--about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the growing consolidation of media ownership, and the privatization of public resources worldwide--will be familiar to people on the left. But there's plenty of less-disseminated information and insight to chew on. For instance, at a time when many progressive thinkers stress transnational phenomena, Roy emphasizes the importance of nation-states: corporations, she notes, need and rely on repressive governments "to quell the mutinies in the servants' quarters." Indeed, creating a good investment climate is impossible without the intervention (or at least the threat of it) of the state.