Where to start with: Arundhati Roy | books

‘T“The writer’s goal is to be unpopular,” Arundhati Roy said in 2018. Over the past three decades—beginning with her 1997 Booker Prize-winning book, The God of Small Things, which catapulted her to fame—the writer’s works of fiction, nonfiction, and essays have been truly polarizing; She became one of the most prominent critics of the Indian government and Hindu nationalism.

Last year, she received the PEN Pinter Prize, which recognizes writers who take an “unflinching and unflinching” look at 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 Foyle’s Book of the Year, and has also been shortlisted for Waterston’s Book of the Year. Here, Priya Bharadia takes readers through Roy’s essential readings.

Entry point

Roy’s debut novel and instant bestseller, The God of Small Things, is a perfect introduction to the major political concerns of her work, from environmental damage, to social class, to the continuing trauma of colonial violence on the nation.

The novel revolves around fraternal twins Rachel and Estha, who reunite as adults after a tragic event that separated them in childhood. Roy highlights the ways in which politics creep into love and intimacy: social prejudices and invisible taboos, which Roy refers to as “laws of love,” prevent characters from fulfilling bonds.

Before writing the books, Roy trained as an architect in New Delhi, and has spoken about the similarities between designing novels and buildings. Her careful attention to structure underpins the novel, as she stirs our emotions to great—if painful—effect. The reasons for this family’s bitterness remain hidden until the end of the novel. All we feel at first is the sting of cruelty, and once the cause is revealed, we feel nothing but pain at its absurdity.

Personality

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 refuge and my storm.” Mary Roy, who died in 2022 at the age of 88, was a force in her own right: she founded a famous school in Kottayam, and won a landmark Supreme Court case against her family that asserted equal inheritance rights for Syrian Christian women. The memoir is a comprehensive account of Roy’s writing career, her observations of a changing India and the continuing complexities of the mother-daughter relationship.

Which deserves more attention

Originally writing the introduction to BR Ambedkar’s fiery 1936 book The Annihilation of Castes, The Doctor and the Saint, published as a stand-alone essay in 2017, tells the story of two giants of modern Indian history – Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar – and their competing visions for the country. The book is also a bold reappraisal of Gandhi, dealing with both troubling and admirable aspects of his legacy. In just over 100 pages, Roy offers a searing takedown of India’s caste system: its history, how it works and its enduring grip on the world’s largest democracy.

Which is worth persevering with

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness was published 20 years after its first appearance, and marked Roy’s much-anticipated return to novel form. Here, Roy is concerned with how to find love and self-expression in times of political repression. Moving between Delhi and Kashmir, Roy weaves together the lives of a vivid cast of characters, each in different circumstances, all struggling for liberation. It is more expansive in structure (some patience is needed as we are caught between memories and the present) but more urgent in tone than her first work of fiction.

If you are short on time

For the perfect, quick Roy essay, 2011’s Walking With the Comrades is a solid choice. For several weeks, Roy travels through the forests of central India with a group of indigenous Naxalite rebels, following their battle with the Indian government to prevent the mining and extraction of their lands. Among her accounts of the rebels she encounters, Roy addresses the connections between environmental devastation, state violence, and global capitalism. Great piece of reporting.

If you only read one, this should be it

Half literary criticism, half polemic, Roy brings together her thoughts on the purpose of fiction in times of increasing authoritarianism in her essay collection Azadi: Fascism, Imagination, and Freedom in the Time of the Virus. The title comes from the word “Azad”, the Urdu word for “freedom”, which has now become synonymous with the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.

Particular highlights include Hints of the End: The Rise and Rise of the Hindu Nation, an overview of the origins and growth of the Hindutva movement. In a lecture he gave at Cambridge University entitled “The Cemetery Speaks Again: Fiction in the Age of Fake News,” Roy builds on an image Kabristan (Muslim Cemetery) To say that only fiction can accurately depict the lives of people who are oppressed and silenced: “Only fiction can speak of the air filled with fear and loss, with mad pride and courage, and with unimaginable brutality.”