Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy | |
|---|---|
 Roy in 2013 | |
| Born | Suzanna Arundhati Roy 24 November 1961[1] Shillong, Assam, India |
| Occupation | Writer, essayist, activist |
| Education | Lawrence School |
| Alma mater | SPA Delhi |
| Period | 1997–present |
| Genre | Fiction, non-fiction |
| Notable works | The God of Small Things |
| Notable awards |
|
| Spouse | |
| Parents | Mary Roy (mother) |
| Relatives | Prannoy Roy (cousin)[4] |
| Signature | |
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Suzanna Arundhati Roy (Bengali pronunciation: [orundʱoti rae̯]; born 24 November 1961)[1] 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 best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author.[1] She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.[6] She was the winner of the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize, given by English PEN,[7] 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.[8]
Early life
Suzanna Arundhati Roy was born on 24 November, 1961 in Shillong in Undivided Assam (now in Meghalaya) into a Christian family,[9] to parents Mary Roy, a Malayali Jacobite Syrian Christian women's rights activist from Kerala and Rajib Roy, a Bengali Christian[10] tea plantation manager from Kolkata, West Bengal.[11] In September 2020, Roy denied false rumors about her being a Brahmin by caste.[10]
When she was two years old, her parents divorced and she returned to Kerala with her mother and brother.[11] 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.[11]
Roy attended school at Corpus Christi in Kottayam, Kerala, followed by the Lawrence School in Lovedale, Tamil Nadu. She reads, writes, and speaks English, Hindi, and Malayalam.[12]
Roy then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, where she met architect Gerard da Cunha. They married in 1978 and lived in Delhi and then Goa before divorcing in 1982.[2][3][11]
Personal life
Roy returned to Delhi, where she obtained a position with the National Institute of Urban Affairs.[11] In 1984, she met independent filmmaker Pradip Krishen, who offered her a role as a goatherd in his award-winning movie Massey Sahib.[13] They married the same year. They collaborated on a television series about India's independence movement and on two films, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989) and Electric Moon (1992).[11] Disenchanted with the film world, Roy experimented with various fields, including running aerobics classes. Roy and Krishen currently live separately but are still married.[3][2][11] She became f