‘The point of the writer is to be unpopular,” said Arundhati Roy in 2018. Over the last three decades – beginning with her 1997 Booker winner, The God of Small Things, which catapulted her into celebrity – the writer’s works of fiction, nonfiction and essays have indeed been polarising; she has become one of the most prominent critics of the Indian government and Hindu nationalism.
Last year, she was awarded the PEN Pinter prize, given to writers who cast an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze on the world. Earlier this year, she published Mother Mary Comes To Me, an account of her relationship with her mother. The memoir has now been named Foyles book of the year, and was also shortlisted for Waterstones book of the year. Here, Priya Bharadia takes readers through Roy’s essential reads.
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The entry point
Roy’s debut novel and instant bestseller, The God of Small Things, is the perfect introduction to the major political concerns of her work, from environmental damage, to caste, to the lingering trauma of colonial violence on a nation.
The novel follows fraternal twins Rahel and Estha who reunite as adults after a tragic event separates them in childhood. Roy highlights the ways politics infiltrates love and intimacy: social prejudices and invisible taboos, which Roy refers to as the “Love Laws”, hold the characters back from fulfilling bonds.
Before writing books, Roy trained as an architect in New Delhi, and has spoken about the parallels between the design of novels and buildings. Her careful attention to structure underpins the novel, as she teases our emotions to great – if painful – effect. The reasons behind this family’s bitterness remain hidden until the novel’s end. All we feel at first is the sting of the cruelty and, once the cause is revealed, only an ache at its senselessness.
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The personal one
In her 2025 memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me, Roy documents her childhood and coming-of-age through her turbulent relationship with her mother, whom she describes as “my shelter and my storm”. Mary Roy, who died in 2022 at 88, was a force in her own right: she founded a renowned school in Kottayam, and won a landmark supreme court case against her own family that affirmed equal inheritance rights for Syrian Christian women. The memoir is a sweeping account of Roy’s writing career, her observations of a changing India and the enduring complexities of the mother-daughter relationship.
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The one that deserves more attention
Originally written as an introduction to BR Ambedkar’s fiery 1936 polemic Annihilation of Caste, The Doctor and the Saint, published as a standalone essay in 2017, tells the story of the two titans of modern Indian history – Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar – and their rival visions for the country. The book is also a bold reappraisal of Gandhi, contending with the troubling and admirable aspects of his legacy. In just over 100 pages, Roy offers a searing takedown of the caste system in India: its history, how it operates and its enduring grip on the world’s largest democracy.
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The one worth persevering with
Published 20 years after her debut, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness marked Roy’s highly anticipated return to the novel form. Here, Roy is concerned with how we find love and self-expression in times of political suppression. Moving between Delhi and Kashmir, Roy weaves the lives of a vivid cast of characters, each in different circumstances, all struggling towards liberation. It is more sprawling in structure (some patience is needed as we’re tugged between memories and the present) yet more urgent in tone than her first work of fiction.
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If you’re short on time
For a quintessential but quick Roy essay, 2011’s Walking With the Comrades is a strong choice. For several weeks, Roy travels through the forests of Central India with a group of Naxalite indigenous rebels, after their battle with the Indian government to prevent the mining and extraction of their land. Between her accounts of the insurgents she met, Roy addresses the connections between environmental destruction, state violence and global capitalism. A fascinating piece of reportage.
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If you only read one, it should be
Half literary criticism, half polemic, Roy compiles her thoughts on the purpose of fiction in times of growing authoritarianism in her essay collection Azadi: Fascism, Fiction and Freedom in the Time of the Virus. The title comes from “Azad”, the Urdu word for “freedom”, which is now synonymous with the Kashmiri fight for self-determination.
Particular standouts include Intimations of an Ending: The Rise and Rise of the Hindu Nation, an overview of the origins and growth of the Hindutva movement. In a Cambridge lecture, The Graveyard Talks Back: Fiction in the Time of Fake News, Roy builds on the image of the kabristan (the Muslim graveyard) to argue it is fiction alone that can accurately depict the lives of people who are suppressed and silenced: “Only fiction can tell about air that is so thick with fear and loss, with pride and mad courage, and with unimaginable cruelty.”
