10 Best Arundhati Roy Books To Read On Communism, Left Ideology, And More

Roy’s debut novel the book that made her name is ostensibly a family story set in Kerala, but it’s also a searing investigation of caste, colonial legacies, and how social power shapes private life. Told through a fractured chronology and luminous images, the novel centers on twins whose lives are devastated by the “Love Laws” the unwritten rules that govern who may love whom. What makes the book relevant to left-minded readers is its attention to structural injustice: land relations, class, and the aftershocks of imperialism appear in intimate detail. Roy’s prose blends lyric tenderness with political anger; the stylistic inventiveness is persuasive not as ornament but as a moral engine, forcing readers to feel the stakes of inequality rather than simply read about them.

Her second novel spans decades and regions graveyards of Old Delhi, Kashmir’s conflict zones, and the hidden lives of people pushed to the margins. The book is episodic and crowded with characters: Anjum, a hijra who makes a home in a graveyard, and Tilo, an architect entangled in political struggles plus soldiers, activists, and survivors of communal violence. For readers interested in left and anti-authoritarian politics, the novel maps how neoliberal “development,” sectarianism, and state violence crumble lives, while also showing forms of solidarity and resistance. Roy’s aim is not subtle: she seeks to narrate the human consequences of policies and wars, and to insist that storytelling can press back against erasure. Its nonlinear structure is challenging but rewarding for those willing to sit with complexity.

This collection gathers essays and speeches on contemporary India’s political shifts: the rise of majoritarian politics, privatization, cultural policing, and the shrinking space for dissent. Roy writes as both witness and interlocutor, mixing on-the-ground reporting with moral interrogation. The book’s strength is its immediacy short, punchy pieces that name actors, policies, and moments, and that insist on solidarity with affected communities. For left readers it functions as a field guide: how communalism links to economic policy, how businesses and state power collaborate, and how everyday life is transformed by structural forces. The tone often flares into righteous anger, but that anger is grounded in named facts and testimonial urgency.

Published in the early 2000s, this essay collection was Roy’s early, trenchant response to post-9/11 geopolitics, India’s nuclear assertiveness, and the growing reach of multinational capital. The essays combine philosophical reflection with crisp polemic; Roy interrogates the moral logic of “the war on terror,” critiques corporate influence on policy, and links global imperial practices to local dispossession. The book is particularly useful for left-leaning readers because it traces how high-level policy (nuclear tests, trade deals, aid conditionality) filters down into violent outcomes for rural communities, trade unions, and dissenting voices. Its rhetorical sweep is wide sometimes sweeping but it remains a powerful early statement of Roy’s claim that literature cannot disentangle itself from political responsibility.

Broken Republic collects essays focused on internal conflict in India, especially the Maoist-led insurgency and the state’s counterinsurgency measures. The collection includes the famous and controversial essay “Walking with the Comrades,” which combined reportage from tribal areas with a sympathetic portrayal of armed resistance and critique of state violence that followed with public debate and censure. For readers on the left, Broken Republic is valuable not because it romanticizes insurgency, but because it insists on looking at root causes land dispossession, corporate mining, and the criminalization of protest rather than accepting simple security narratives. Roy presses readers to confront uncomfortable questions about justice and the limits of formal democracy.

This book is a tightly argued indictment of the collusion between corporate power, political elites, and what Roy calls the “new feudal” outcomes of privatized development. Using case studies land grabs, corporate projects, and linked political corruption Roy shows how neoliberal policy produces ghostly citizens: formally counted in GDP but stripped of rights and livelihoods. The argument will resonate with readers who want a pointed, Indian-focused critique of global capitalism: Roy connects the dots between bank bailouts, forced displacement, and cultural politics to reveal a system that thrives by producing dispossession. The book reads like a series of investigative notes, urgent and enraged, aimed at readers who prefer argument sharpened by evidence and moral clarity. 

This omnibus collects two decades of Roy’s nonfiction, bringing together many of her major essays, speeches, and reportage. It is an excellent one-volume entry for readers who want to trace her evolution: early critiques of globalisation and US foreign policy, later deep dives into caste, communalism, Kashmir and environmental struggles. The collection’s shape allows readers to see recurring themes solidarity with marginalized communities, skepticism of state narratives, and a poetic insistence on naming violence while also sensing shifts as new conflicts emerge. For left-leaning readers this book functions both as a primer and a reference: a set of scaffolds for thinking about how literature, reportage, and protest cohere. 

A meditative, short-form essay (or series of essays) that interrogates the meanings of “freedom” in contemporary India, Azadi whose title translates as “freedom links everyday authoritarian moves to larger patterns of fascist consolidation. Roy’s interest here is rhetorical and political: how language, media, and legal tools are used to normalize violence, silence dissent, and manufacture consent. For readers concerned with left critique of rising authoritarianism, the book is a compact call to question liberal complacencies and to imagine solidarity beyond technocratic remedies. It’s not a policy manual so much as a moral and literary jeremiad brief, sharp, and designed to unsettle comfortable narratives about progress.

This short, concentrated work examines Gandhi’s legacy and the ways caste and race have been narrated in Indian public life. Roy scrutinizes canonical figures and the myths that have been woven around them, arguing that romanticized versions of leaders often obscure structural injustices like caste domination. The book is especially useful to left readers because it refuses easy nationalism: Roy insists on confronting caste as a material, violent order that intersects with class and state policy. Her critique complicates the usual binaries (colonizer/colonized, elite/popular) and pushes readers to locate liberation projects that address caste-based economic and social hierarchies alongside class struggles.

This collection pulls together essays and first-hand accounts about Kashmir’s often-overlooked political crisis. Roy’s contributions are direct and urgent; she pushes us to stop seeing Kashmir as a distant geopolitical puzzle and start seeing the people who live there their lives shaped by militarisation, dispossession and repeated rights violations. The editors centre Kashmiri writers and activists so the book reads as testimony rather than second-hand analysis. For anyone interested in decolonisation and social justice, the volume challenges security-first narratives, insists on the right to self-determination, and lays bare the real cost of securitisation. Roy’s pieces amplify local voices and ask both national and international readers to take responsibility