In 1997 Arundathi Roy won the Booker Prize for her debut novel ‘God of small things’ and was popular since then and acclaimed as one of the best Indian novels. And it took 20 years for her to write her second novel ‘Ministry of Utmost happiness’.
Mentioning that she told once, she doesn’t need to write a novel because she won the prize but she will write when she has one.
However, in between those years she wrote a few non-fiction books. Either Her pen or mouth never stopped talking. Her voice as an activist got her many troubles but motivated millions of people around the globe.
Recently, the Penguin Random House India stated that Arundathi Roy’s first memoir, ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ will be published in September this year. The initial description of the book is on their website.
Complex relationship
Her first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’ – Penguin Random house.
This arose in Roy’s mind when her mother died in 2022. She ran from her mother when she was 18 and suddenly she felt that she needed to write something when she was gone.
“Not because I didn’t love her, but to be able to continue to love her,” she said about the book.
With the depth and scale of her novels, and her sharpness and passion in her essays, this book is an ode to freedom about love and hate relationship with her mother – a memoir like no other.
Arundhati Roy says, “I have been writing this book all my life. Perhaps a mother like mine deserved a writer like me as a daughter. “Equally, perhaps a writer like me deserved a mother like her. Even more than a daughter mourning the passing of her mother, I mourn her as a writer who has lost her most enthralling subject. It’s not easy for me to think of this story being out in this world, at this time, but I am reassured by the fact that it will be published by some of the most thoughtful, legendary publishers in the world.”
In June 2024, it was revealed that Roy had won the PEN Pinter prize, which is presented each year to a writer who, as described by the late playwright Harold Pinter, offers a “steadfast, unwavering” perspective on the world. This announcement came just two weeks after Indian officials approved legal action against the writer for statements she made about Kashmir 14 years prior. Many Indian academics, artists, activists, journalists signed an open petition calling the government to withdraw the petition.
Courageous memoir
“We are delighted to share it with the world,” Manasi Subramaniam, Editor-in-Chief of Penguin Press, Penguin Random House, India said.
“That Arundhati Roy has chosen this generous, courageous memoir as her means to unravel her relationship with her formidable mother is our privilege entirely — for, in doing so, she allows her reader to bear witness to a remarkable journey. Filled with heart and nerve, humour and pathos, and the very raw edges of love, ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ is a visceral and unflinching account of personal and political awakening.”
The publishing date of Roy’s memoir is fixed to September 4, 2025. Simon Prosser, publishing director at Hamish Hamilton says, “What an astonishing book this is – a triumph of a memoir, magically combining all the many elements of Arundhati Roy’s life and writing.”
However, her readers have to wait another nine months to get in touch with this brilliant piece of Roy.
