Suzanna Arundhati Roy (; born 24 November 1961) 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 biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She was the winner of the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize, given by English PEN, and she named imprisoned British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah as the "Writer of Courage" with whom she chose to share the award.
Early life
Roy was born in Shillong, in Undivided Assam (now in Meghalaya). Her mother, Mary Roy, was a Malayali Christian women's rights activist from Aymanam, Kerala, and belonged to the Jacobite Syrian denomination. Her father, Rajib Roy, was a Bengali Hindu
Roy's father was an alcoholic. When she was two years old, her parents divorced, and she returned to Kerala with her mother and brother. 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. and Electric Moon (1992). 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. She attracted attention in 1994 when she criticised Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, which was based on the life of Phoolan Devi.
The God of Small Things
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Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, in 1992, completing it in 1996. The book is semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Aymanam. 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 a publishing advance of half a million pounds. "extraordinary", "at once so morally strenuous and so imaginatively supple") and the Los Angeles Times ("a novel of poignancy and considerable sweep"), and in Canadian publications such as the Toronto Star ("a lush, magical novel"). It was one of the five best books of 1997 according to Time. Critical response in the United Kingdom was less favourable, and the awarding of the Booker Prize caused controversy; Carmen Callil, a 1996 Booker Prize judge, called the novel "execrable" and a Guardian journalist called the content "profoundly depressing". In India, E. K. Nayanar, then the chief minister of Roy's home state of Kerala, especially criticised the book's unrestrained description of sexuality, and she had to answer charges of obscenity.
Later career
Since the success of her novel, Roy has written a television serial, The Banyan Tree, and the documentary DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy (2002).
In early 2007, Roy said she was working on a second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
thumb|Roy, [[Man Booker Prize winner]]
Roy contributed to We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, a book released in 2009 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.
Roy has written numerous essays on contemporary politics and culture. In 2014, they were collected by Penguin India in a five-volume set.
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. The novel was chosen for the Man Booker Prize 2017 longlist, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in January 2018.
Roy's book Mother Mary Comes to Me was published in September 2025. A memoir, it focuses on her early years living with her mother, whom Roy calls "my shelter and my storm". It was broadcast in five parts on BBC Radio 4 as Book of the Week.
In 2026, Roy's restored 1989 film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones was scheduled to screen at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, and Roy was due to appear, but she withdrew after jury president Wim Wenders, said in response to a journalist's question that the jury "has to stay out of politics".
Influences
Roy cites William Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, John Berger, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez as influences and has said, "I’m grateful for the lessons one learns from great writers, but also from imperialists, sexists, friends, lovers, oppressors, revolutionaries—everybody. Everybody has something to teach a writer".
Advocacy
Since publishing The God of Small Things in 1997, Roy has spent most of her time on political activism and nonfiction (such as collections of essays about social causes). She is a spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and US foreign policy. She opposes India's policies toward nuclear weapons as well as industrialisation and economic growth (which she describes as "encrypted with genocidal potential" in Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy). She has also questioned the conduct of the Indian police and administration in the case of the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and the Batla House encounter case, contending that the country has had a "shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake encounters".
Support for Kashmiri Independence
In an August 2008 interview with The Times of India, Roy expressed her support for the independence of Kashmir from India after the massive demonstrations in 2008 in favour of independence took place—some 500,000 people rallied in Srinagar in the Kashmir part of Jammu and Kashmir state of India for independence on 18 August 2008, following the Amarnath land transfer controversy. According to her, the rallies were a sign that Kashmiris desired secession from India, and not union with India. She was criticised by the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party for her remarks.