The God of small things - Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

 

[ Booker winning prize ]

Introduction about author and booker prize : 

The God of Small Things” is a novel written by the famous write Arundhati Roy. This was her first novel and has won the Booker prize in London 1997. This novel depicts about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins, whose lives were destroyed by the Love Laws, wherein it speaks about who should be loved and in what proportion. The novel depicts of how small things in life, affect people’s lives and behavior.

 

Arundhati Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things. The award carried a prize of about US$30,000 and a citation that noted, "The book keeps all the promises that it makes".Prior to this, she won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1989, for the screenplay of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, in which she captured the anguish among the students prevailing in professional institutions.In 2015, she returned the national award in protest against religious intolerance and the growing violence by rightwing groups in India.

In 2002, she won the Lannan Foundation's Cultural Freedom Award for her work "about civil societies that are adversely affected by the world's most powerful governments and corporations", in order "to celebrate her life and her ongoing work in the struggle for freedom, justice and cultural diversity".

In 2003, she was awarded "special recognition" as a Woman of Peace at the Global Exchange Human Rights Awards in San Francisco with Bianca Jagger, Barbara Lee, and Kathy Kelly.

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and her advocacy of non-violence.

In January 2006, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, a national award from India's Academy of Letters, for her collection of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it "in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by 'violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalisation'".

In November 2011, she was awarded the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing.

About Novel : -

The story begins twenty-three years after the main events which will be covered by the novel, with flashbacks to that earlier period which culminated in the funeral of Sophie Mol. References to the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man and the death of Sophie Mol will be explained later in the novel.

The novel presents three generations of women.  It can be called the story of sufferings of Baby Kochamma, Mammachi, Ammu and Rahel.  They all suffer in different ways.  In a country like India where patriarchal system is very strong, women suffer mentally, physically and sexually.
The story revolves in a small town named Ayemenem, now a part of Kottayam in Kerala. The story speaks about two fraternal twins Rahel and Estha from their age of 7 in 1969 till they reunite when they turn to be 31 in 1993. Most of the story is written at the viewpoint of the seven year olds. In this novel, she has captured the caste system, communism and the Syrian Christian life in Kerala.
The novel begins with the story of a lady who desperately wants to get away from her ill-tempered father and finally she gets away to stay with her aunt in Calcutta and there she marries a man, who assists in the tea estate. But her marriage was unsuccessful and she returns home with her twin children, Estha and Rahel . On her return, apart from her mother and brother, they have their aunt who is her father’s sister staying with them. Ammu`s brother gets married to an English women whom he fell in love with at college and they have a daughter named Sophie. The novel revolves around these characters and the life they live and disaster that follow in their lives.