The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire - Softcover

Roy, Arundhati

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9780007181636: The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007181639 ISBN 13: 9780007181636

Publisher: South End Press, 2004

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An utterly entrancing new collection of essays, as controversial, inspirational and passionate as anything Arundhati Roy has yet written. In this collection of speeches and essays, gathered together here for the first time, Arundhati Roy writes, with passion, clarity and urgency, about the subjects dearest to her heart, subjects which must be of the utmost importance to any of us interested in democracy, in global justice, and in the direction certain powerful agencies beyond our control are taking the world. Focusing largely on that intense period leading up to and beyond the UN's attack on Iraq, Roy systematically deconstructs the US government's argument for going to war. She brilliantly exposes the gaping errors in their thesis, the hypocrisy and false ideology behind the rhetoric that led to 42% of the American public believing that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the attacks of 9/11 on the World Trade Centre, and that a bombed, besieged and starved country such as Iraq was a direct threat to the safety of the mighty USA. Roy opens our eyes, like no other writer can do, to the problems that our increasingly divided world is creating, highlighting the growing disparity between rich and poor, with the world's poor increasing by 100 million in the last ten years. Every article Arundhati Roy writes, every speech she gives, attracts worldwide attention and this collection, controversial, polemical, provoking but always inspirational, is an essential addition to her work.

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About the Author:

Arundhati Roy is the author of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, which won the Booker Prize in 1997

From Publishers Weekly:

Those who fear the dry and impenetrable prose of many political essays need have no such reservations with this selection. Indian author Roy (The God of Small Things) brings a novelistic readability and immediacy to her impassioned critiques of imperialism, the corporate media and their "neo-liberal project"—what she describes as "the medium of those who have power and money." Her unequivocally critical look at the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq will likely lead American readers to label her as either brilliantly astute or strongly anti-American. Still, she carefully differentiates between governments and their people. In "Instant Mix Imperial Democracy," she congratulates Americans for standing up to their government: "Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that’s as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her Homeland." In the same talk, Roy delivers a scathing critique of the current state of democracy: "The project of corporate globalization has cracked the code of democracy. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder." In addition to observing problems; Roy suggests non-violent solutions—boycotts, protests and open discussion. Regardless of whether one agrees with her ideas, Roy crafts articulate and convincing arguments that deserve their place in any debate on globalization, democracy or Iraq.
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