Arundhati Roy:

Writer or Activist’?

Abstract

This essay evaluates features in Arundhati Roy’s non-fiction or political essays. Through the course of her works, she opens up a whole spectrum of questions: can fiction and non-fiction occupy a common ground without dissolving their generic differences, does non-fiction become activism if it strays too far away from conventional practices and actively promotes acts of resistance, can writers choose not to take into account the upheavals that they witness, is silence defensible on the grounds that the political is polemical and fiction is subtle? Roy posits that she is a writer creatively engaged in activism rather than a writer-activist who merely professionalizes protest.