Arundhati Roy was born in 1961 in
West Bengal, and grew up in
Kerala, her mother's homeland. She trained as an architect at the Delhi School of Architecture, but abandoned the field . She started writing film scripts. She wrote and starred in 'In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones,' and wrote the script for Pradip Kishen's 'Electric Moon.' Her support of Phoolan Devi drew much media attention; Arundhati Roy felt that Phoolan Devi had been exploited by Shekhar Kapur's film 'Bandit Queen.' The controversy ended in a court case, after which she retired to private life to work on her first book, 'The God of Small Things,' which was published in 1997 and won Britain's premier book prize, the Booker McConnell in the same year. She is the first non-expatriate Indian author and the first Indian woman to bag the prize. At the time of writing this famed book, she was working as an aerobics instructor at New Delhi. As the daughter of Mary Roy, the woman whose court case changed the inheritance laws in favour of women, she was closely acquainted with the Syrian Christian traditions which feature prominently in the book.
Arundhati Roy took a span of four and a half years to complete the novel. The book, translated into 27 languages, is remarkable for its quality of innocence and originality of style.
In keeping with her longtime interest in social issues, she has immersed herself in causes such as the anti-nuclear movement and the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
