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Arundhati Roy

Biography

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is the author of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and THE MINSTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS, which has been translated into more than 40 languages and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. Roy has also published several works of nonfiction, including THE END OF IMAGINATION, THE DOCTOR AND THE SAINT, MY SEDITIOUS HEART and AZADI. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and in 2024 the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” She lives in Delhi.

Arundhati Roy

Books by Arundhati Roy

by Arundhati Roy - Memoir, Nonfiction

MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME is a soaring account of how Arundhati Roy became the person and the writer she is. “Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age 18, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prize-winning novels and essays, through today.

by Arundhati Roy - Fiction

THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS begins with Anjum --- who used to be Aftab --- unrolling a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard she calls home. We encounter the odd, unforgettable Tilo and the men who loved her --- including Musa, sweetheart and ex-sweetheart, lover and ex-lover; their fates are as entwined as their arms used to be and always will be. We meet Tilo’s landlord, a former suitor, now an intelligence officer posted to Kabul. And then we meet the two Miss Jebeens: the first a child born in Srinagar and buried in its overcrowded Martyrs’ Graveyard; the second found at midnight, abandoned on a concrete sidewalk in the heart of New Delhi.

by Arundhati Roy - Fiction

Set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala, Southern India, THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS tells the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel. Among the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother's factory, they try to craft a childhood for themselves amidst what constitutes their family --- their lonely, lovely mother, their beloved Uncle Chacko (pickle-baron, radical Marxist and bottom-pincher) and their avowed enemy; Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grand-aunt).