Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian novelist, essayist and activist who
focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in
1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several
collections of essays. Her writings on various social, environmental and political issues have
been a subject of major controversy in India.
For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan
Foundation in 2002
Early life and background
Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya,
[1]
India, to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother,
the women's rights activist Mary Roy, and a Bengali father, Ranjit Roy, a tea planter by
profession.
She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam,
followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied
architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, where she met her first
husband, architect Gerard da Cunha.
Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984, and played a village girl in his
award-winning movie Massey Sahib. Until made financially stable by the success of her novel
The God of Small Things, she worked various jobs, including running aerobics classes at five-
star hotels in New Delhi. Roy is a cousin of prominent media personality Prannoy Roy, the head
of the leading Indian TV media group NDTV,.
[2]
She lives in New Delhi.
Advocacy and controversy
Since The God of Small Things Roy has devoted herself mainly to nonfiction and politics,
publishing two more collections of essays, as well as working for social causes. She is a
spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of
neo-imperialism and of the global policies of the United States. She also criticizes India's nuclear
weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being
practiced in India, including the Narmada Dam project and the power company Enron's activities
in India.