Suzanna Arundhati Roy is a prominent Indian author, famous for her novel The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. Besides her writing, she is an active political advocate, focusing on human rights and environmental issues. In 2024, she was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize by English PEN, and she chose to share this honor with Alaa Abd El-Fattah, the imprisoned British-Egyptian writer and activist, whom she recognized as the “Writer of Courage.”
The God of Small Things is a family drama novel written by Indian writer Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the “Love Laws” prevalent in the 1960s Kerala, India. The novel explores how small, seemingly insignificant occurrences, decisions and experiences shape people’s behavior in deeply significant ways. The novel also explores the lingering effects of casteism in India, lending a culturally specific critique of British colonialism in India. It won the Booker Prize in 1997.