Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer and activist who supports and writes about issues pertaining to the society. She is an active supporter of issues ranging from social justice and economic inequality. Her Booker Award in 1997 for the novel, ‘The God of Small Things’ catapulted her to the heights of fame in the international arena. She is one of those authors who constantly tried to bring to light matters affecting the society and nation. Beside her famed novel, she has also dabbled in writing screenplays and various collections of essays.

She was born in Shillong, Meghalaya to a woman’s rights activist mother and a tea planter father. She spent her childhood in Kerala from where she pursued her elementary education. Having completed her schooling, she took up Architecture and studied at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi.

Arundhati Roy is one woman writer who strived to succeed and won over all the obstacles to become of the prominent personalities. Before her book, ‘The God of Small Things’ made the world take notice of her, she worked in various different capacities and worked various jobs including running aerobics classes for people in five star hotels in Delhi.

Not many would be aware that she has also dabbled in acting a few times and played the role of a village girl in an award winning movie ‘Massey Sahib’ which was produced by her second husband, who was a filmmaker by profession. She created a storm in 1994 when she criticized filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor’s film Bandit Queen for sensationalizing the torture and trauma that Phoolan Devi had to go through.
Her Booker Prize novel ‘The God of Small Things’ was listed as among the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 1997. She received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002 for her work as an activist.