Arundhati Roy or Suzanna Arundhati Roy, as she is better known is one of the most acclaimed novelist and writer turned into journalist and social activist in the contemporary India. Though pursuing the warmth of writing from an earlier age she came into prominence through the winning of the highly acclaimed Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel The God of Small Things and the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize in the year 2002.
She was born in the the north-eastern province of India, at the capital city of Meghalaya in Shillong. Her mother was a Keralite Syrian Christian lady, the well known women’s rights activist Mary Roy, and her father was a Bengali Hindu, by profession a tea planter. From her childhood being in the family of educated and progressive parents she was fortunate enough to attain a good education. While she was in Aymanam in Kerala during her childhood shw was admitted to the school Corpus Christi, Kottayam followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale in the Nilgiris, in Tamil Nadu. It was followed by hery studying of Architecture at the well known School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi.
Her educational and family background infused her to start writing her first novel, The God of Small Things in the year 1992 and completing it in 1996. the book written in a semi-biographical mode focusing a lote on her childhood experiences earned for her laurels after being eulogized to a great height by both the regional and national media. The novel was conferred in the year 1997 the Man Booker Prize as the best specimen for the category of Fiction, and even was referred in the list of the New York Times’ list of Notable Books of the Year for 1997. the book even reached he fourth position in the celebreated New York Times’ Bestsellers list in the Independent Fiction classification. The book enabled her with the receipt of half a million pounds as an advance and the rights to the book were sold in 21 countries creating a profound interest in the Indian diaspora.
Inspite of such an eventual success, The God of Small Things has been the only novel writtne so far, since it was followed by her plunging into the terrene of non ficiton, social activism along with taking a defiant stand in the realm of politics, an unknown saga in the Indian literary environment hitherto. She has come out with two more collections of essays focusing on various social echelons. In the ongoing tirade against the notion of globalization she has always been perceived at the forefront and is also a vehement critic of the neo-imprialist and global hegimonistic policies of the United States and its dreadful applications in various tiers of the society, including the plebians and also the so called Dalits or the downtrodden of the Indian society. She has also been witnessed in the recent years of the Nuclear Policy of India along with the rapid industrialization and rapid development as currently being practiced in India, including the Naramada Dam project where she shared the dias with activist Medha Patkar and the power company Enron’s activities in India. Recenlty in the Nadigram debacle of West Bengal she was found in the streets of the capital, New Delhi protesting against the inhuman govrnmental represion claiming a handful of lives, for the sake of industrialization.
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