ARUNDHATI ROY

ARUNDHATI ROY

Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer who writes in English and an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.

Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India.She spent her childhood in  Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at  Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the  Lawrence School, Lovedale in Nilgiris,  Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Agriculture, Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard da Cunha.

Roy met her second husband, filmmaker  Pradip Krishnan, in 1984, and played a village girl in his award-winning movie Massey Sahib. Until made financially secure by the success of her novel  The God of small things ,she worked various jobs, including running aerobics classes at five-star hotels in New Delhi.Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things n 1992, completing it in 1996. The book is semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Aymanam The publication of The God of Small Things catapulted Roy to instant 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 for 1997. It reached fourth position on the New York Times  Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction. From the beginning, the book was also a commercial success: Roy received half a million pounds as an advance; It was published in May, and the book had been sold to eighteen countries by the end of June.

Since the success of her novel, Roy has been working as a screenplay writer again.

In early 2007, Roy announced that she would begin work on a second novel.Arundhati Roy was one of the contributors on the book We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, released in October 2009. The book explores the culture of peoples around the world, portraying their diversity and the threats to their existence.Since The God of Small Things Roy has devoted herself mainly to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays, as well as working for social causes. She also criticizes India’s   nuclear weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being practised in India, including the  Narmada Dam project and the power company Enron’s  activities in India.In an interview with the Times of India published in August 2008, Arundhati Roy expressed her support for the independence of Kashmir .Roy has campaigned along with activist  Medha Patkar against Narmada dam project , saying that the dam will displace half a million people, with little or no compensation, and will not provide the projected irrigation, drinking water and other benefits Roy donated her Booker prize money as well as royalties from her books on the project to the  Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Prof. John Kurakar