Arundhati Roy

Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel "The God of Small Things", which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.

Since the success of her novel, Roy has written a television serial, "The Banyan Tree", and the documentary DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy.

She has written numerous essays on contemporary politics and culture. In 2014, they were collected by Penguin India in a five-volume set. In 2019, her nonfiction was collected in a single volume, "My Seditious Heart". Her second novel "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" was published in 2017.

Roy has spent most of her time on political activism and nonfiction. She is a spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and U.S. foreign policy. She opposes India's policies toward nuclear weapons as well as industrialization and economic growth.

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and her advocacy of non-violence. In November 2011, she was awarded the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing. Roy was featured in the 2014 list of Time 100, the 100 most influential people in the world.