Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961)[1] is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author.[1] She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.[6]
Early life
Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India,[7] to Mary Roy, a Malayali Jacobite Syrian Christian women's rights activist from Kerala and Rajib Roy, a Bengali Christian[8] tea plantation manager from Kolkata.[9] She has denied false rumors about her being a Brahmin by caste.[8] When she was two, her parents divorced and she returned to Kerala with her mother and brother.[9] For some time, the family lived with Roy's maternal grandfather in Ooty, Tamil Nadu. When she was five, the family moved back to Kerala, where her mother started a school.[9]
Early in her career, Roy worked in television and movies. She starred in Massey Sahib in 1985. She wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), a movie based on her experiences as a student of architecture, in which she also appeared as a performer, and Electric Moon (1992).[11] Both were directed by her husband, Pradip Krishen, during their marriage. Roy won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1988 for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.[12] She attracted attention in 1994 when she criticised Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, which was based on the life of Phoolan Devi.[11] In her film review titled "The Great Indian Rape Trick", she questioned the right to "restage the rape of a living woman without her permission", and charged Kapur with exploiting Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning.[13][14][15]
The God of Small Things
The publication of The God of Small Things catapulted Roy to international fame. It received the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction and was listed as one of The New York Times Notable Books of the Year.[17] It reached fourth position on The New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction.[18] From the beginning, the book was also a commercial success: Roy received half a million pounds as an advance.[15] It was published in May, and the book had been sold in 18 countries by the end of June.[16]
The God of Small Things received stellar reviews in major American newspapers such as The New York Times (a "dazzling first novel,"[19] "extraordinary", "at once so morally strenuous and so imaginatively supple"[20]) and the Los Angeles Times ("a novel of poignancy and considerable sweep"[21]), and in Canadian publications such as the Toronto Star ("a lush, magical novel"[22]). It was one of the five best books of 1997 according to Time.[23] Critical response in the United Kingdom was less positive, and the awarding of the Booker Prize caused controversy; Carmen Callil, a 1996 Booker Prize judge, called the novel "execrable", and The Guardian called the context "profoundly depressing".[24] In India, the book was criticised especially for its unrestrained description of sexuality by E. K. Nayanar,[25] then Chief Minister of Roy's home state Kerala, where she had to answer charges of obscenity.[26]
Later career
Roy contributed to We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, a book released in 2009[29] that explores the culture of peoples around the world, portraying their diversity and the threats to their existence. The royalties from the sale of this book go to the indigenous rights organisation Survival International.[30]
Roy has written numerous essays on contemporary politics and culture. In 2014, they were collected by Penguin India in a five-volume set.[9] In 2019, her nonfiction was collected in a single volume, My Seditious Heart, published by Haymarket Books.[31]
In October 2016, Penguin India and Hamish Hamilton UK announced that they would publish her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in June 2017.[32] The novel was chosen for the Man Booker Prize 2017 Long List[33] and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in January 2018.[34]
Roy, Arundhati (1 April 2009). "This is not a war on terror. It is a racist war on all Tamils". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 28 May 2017. Retrieved 11 December 2016. Arundhati Roy1961 births20th-century Indian essayists20th-century Indian non-fiction writers20th-century Indian novelists20th-century Indian screenwriters20th-century Indian women writers21st-century Indian
