Arundhati Roy’s Power Politics is the best book of political essays I have ever read. Not that I’m an expert on the genre or anything, but that’s just it. I try to read about politics. But more often than not, I find myself distracted by the newest Tom Robbins novel or the latest story of yet another walk in yet another woods.

I picked up Power Politics one Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday night I was wishing it were longer. The book contains three essays – “The Ladies Have Feelings, So . Shall We Leave It to the Experts?” “Power Politics – The Reincarnation of Rumplestiltskin,” and “On Citizens’ Rights to Express Dissent.” I would have read 30.

What makes Roy’s writings so fascinating? She doesn’t just talk about politics-she talks about people, about people she knows and people she cares about and people who are trying very hard to remind the world that people are what democracy is all about. She has a sense of humor – not the maybe-if-we-laugh-at-this-it-will-all-go-away kind of humor, but the if-we-don’t-stay-positive-we-might-as-well-give-up-and-go-home kind.

Roy discusses several specific issues – including the environmental consequences of damming India’s biggest river-but her most compelling arguments are made in her exploration of the relationship between art and politics. She rejects the label of writer-activist as redundant, and claims that the pressure to produce something that will sell censors true art just as effectively as violent repression.

“Painters, writers, singers, actors, dancers, filmmakers, musicians are meant to fly, to push at the frontiers, to worry the edges of the human imagination, to conjure beauty from the most unexpected things, to find magic in the places where others never thought to look,” she says. “If you limit the trajectory of their flight, if you weight their wings with society’s existing notions of morality and responsibility, if you truss them up with preconceived values, you subvert their endeavor.”

Roy is also a novelist; her first book, The God of Small Things, is a great option for those of you who like your politics on the rocks or with a chaser. But take them straight if you think you can handle it – I think you’ll find that Power Politics goes down easier than you expect.