“Heart-smashed” by the death of the mother she ran from at age 18 and shaken by the intensity of her response, Arundhati Roy began this remarkable memoir --- a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is: shaped by circumstance but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother Mary, who she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace.

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.

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).