The ordinary person's guide to empire - Arundhati Roy

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.