Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy, acclaimed Indian author and activist was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. She is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel, which was published in cloth in 1997 by Random House and in paperback in 1998 by HarperPerennial, has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. She has written several non-fiction books, including, The Cost of Living (Random House / Modern Library), Power Politics (South End Press), which have been collected under the title The Algebra of Infinite Justice in the United Kingdom (Flamingo), and War Talk (South End Press, 2003). Her most recent books are The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile, a collection of interviews by David Barsamian, and The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, her latest collection of essays. Roy is featured in a BBC television documentary, “Dam/age,” which chronicles her work in support of the struggle against big dams in India and the contempt of court case that led to a prolonged legal case against her and eventually a one-day jail sentence in spring 2002.