Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy (born 1961) is an Indian novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work has brought literary fiction into sustained conversation with questions of social justice, political power, and environmental change. Her first novel, The God of Small Things, won the 1997 Booker Prize, making her the prize’s first Indian winner.

Before her fiction debut, Roy wrote the screenplay for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, which received the National Film Award for Best Screenplay. After The God of Small Things, she published essays addressing subjects including displacement, poverty, nuclear weapons, and human rights. Her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017. In 2025, Penguin published her first memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, an account of her life and her relationship with her mother.

Roy’s writing has been recognized by the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize and the Sydney Peace Prize, whose citation noted her human-rights advocacy and commitment to nonviolence. In 2023, she received the Prix Européen de l’Essai from the Fondation Charles Veillon. Her career spans fiction, essays, and screenwriting, with public questions and individual lives remaining closely connected across these forms.