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Arundhati Roy: Know the Author and Works


Arundhati Roy's Novels: 'The God of Small Things' and 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'

Arundhati Roy, full name Suzanna Arundhati Roy, (born November 24, 1961, Shillong, Meghalaya, India), Indian author, actress, and political activist who was best known for the award-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her involvement in environmental and human rights causes.

Famous works of Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things - 1997
The End of Imagination - 1998
The Cost of Living - 1999
The Algebra of Infinite Justice - 2001
War Talk - 2003
Kashmir - the Case for Freedom - 2011
Capitalism - A Ghost Story - 2014
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - 2017
My seditious Heart - 2019

The God of Small Things


Published: 1997
Written: 1992-1996, Delhi
Setting: Kerala
Booker prize in 1997

The God of Small Things set in Kerala, India, during the late 1960s when Communism rattled the age-old caste system, the story begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel's protagonists, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In an avoiding and suspenseful narrative, Roy reveals the family tensions that led to the twins' behaviour on a fateful night that Sophie drowned. Rahel and Estha both who are separated for 23 years after the fateful hours in which their cousin drowns their mother's affair is revealed and her lover is murdered. The book is set at the point of the twin's reunion and confronts two social conventions of India. The book explores how small things affect people's behaviour and their lives.

      Arundhati Roy's powers of description are difficult, she sometimes perishes to overwriting, forcing every minute detail to symbolize something bigger, and the velocity of the story slows. But these lapses are few, and her powers merge magnificently in the book's second half. Roy's clarity of vision is remarkable, her voice original, her story beautifully constructed and masterfully told.


The Ministry of Utmost Happiness


The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is the second novel by Indian writer Arundhati Roy, published in 2017, twenty years after her debut, The God of Small Things. It has been translated into 50 languages, including Urdu and Hindi.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, hulking, sprawling story that it is, has two main strands. One follows Anjum, a hijra, or transwoman, struggling to make a life for herself in Delhi. The other follows Tilo, a thorny and irresistible architect turned activist (who seems to be modeled on Roy herself), and the three men who fall in love with her. But as was true of The God of Small Things, there is more than a touch of fairy tale in the book’s moral simplicity—or clarity, if you’re feeling charitable. Roy will say of a character, “He was a very clean man. And a good one too,” and he is swiftly, unequivocally pinned to the page.

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