Since the publication of her best-selling debut novel, Arundhati Roy has written often, using her pen as a weapon. But there is a reason why she is far more formidable as a writer of fiction Arundhati Roy was the first Indian to win the Booker Prize. Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint
There are two plain, unbeautiful (and clichéd) words that we think about when reading Arundhati Roy. Small, and big; “small” people, “big” causes. The first she made famous with her first novel, The God Of Small Things. It won a big British literary prize, the Booker, remarkable at that time for a book so particularly Indian—and also, Malayali—in its ethos. An original English novel, but also an original Indian novel, authentic in its voice to the place and people it described. It stoked the imaginations of its readers; made many Indians believe that they too had a story in them. She was the first Indian to win the Booker, and it remains the only book prize that Indians have any sense of familiarity with, even 20 years later.

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