Arundhati Roy, Booker Prize-winning author has released her first memoir, “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” offering an unflinching look at her difficult relationship with her late mother and her journey as one of India’s most outspoken writers, per publishersweekly.com.
The memoir, according to the outlet, examines Roy’s complex bond with Mary Roy, a pioneering educator and women’s rights activist who died in 2022. Roy describes her mother as having “the edginess of a gangster” and recalls a childhood marked by unpredictable outbursts and abuse. “I never, ever thought I’d write a memoir,” Roy admits, but her mother’s death left her unable to write anything else.
Roy, author of bestsellers “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” with combined sales exceeding eight million copies, reveals intimate details about her youth in Kerala, sexual abuse by a family acquaintance, and an abortion without anesthesia in her 20s. The memoir also chronicles her move to Delhi as a teenager, carrying a knife for protection, and her evolution from novelist to political activist.
Despite her mother’s tyrannical nature, Roy credits Mary Roy with showing her the power of challenging authority. Mary Roy famously won a landmark court battle in the 1980s securing inheritance rights for Christian women in Kerala. “My mother was an airport with no runways,” Roy reflects, describing a woman who rejected traditional motherhood while fighting for social justice.
Roy’s own activism has placed her in frequent conflict with India’s government. She’s faced political attacks for criticising the Narmada Dam Project, living with Maoist guerrillas to document corporate exploitation, and publishing controversial essays. In 2024, she received the English PEN Pinter Prize for her uncompromising political writing.
Editor Kathryn Belden at Scribner praises Roy’s ability to bring novelistic skills to her personal story, noting the memoir’s “narrative energy.” Roy’s US agent Anthony Arnove describes her as “a remarkable spirit” guided by fierce independence.
Now living in Delhi with rescue dogs and maintaining college friendships, Roy remains grateful for her unconventional path. “I’m able to say what I think and write what I want and to not be a cog in the machine,” she says, embodying the rebellious spirit her mother would have approved of.
