As a thinker, mystic and social critic, Simone Weil is one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century. She was a Marxist who experienced the relations of power between producing and ruling classes first hand as a field and factory worker. She was an internationalist who felt that the fall of Paris was a "great day for Indo-China", and yet she wanted to fight for France. Camus called her social writings "more penetrating and more prophetic than anything since Marx." What comes through strongly in this book are Weil"s power of analysis and criticism, her love of truth and hunger for justice, her commitment to non-violence, and, most of all, her regard for everyone and everything marginalized or excluded by orthodoxies and establishments, whether colonized people or heresy.