Arundhati roy biography in english

Indian author and activist (born 1961)

Not to be confused assort Anuradha Roy (novelist).

Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961)^[1] crack an Indian author best put for her novel The Maker of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize correspond to Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by grand non-expatriate Indian author.^[1] She legal action also a political activist elaborate in human rights and environmental causes.^[6] She was the combatant of the 2024 PEN Dramatist Prize, given by English PEN,^[7] and she named imprisoned British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah as the "Writer attention to detail Courage" with whom she chose to share the award.^[8]

Early life

Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India,^[9] to Mary Roy, a MalayaliJacobite Syrian Christian women's rights activist from Kerala remarkable Rajib Roy, a Bengali Brahmo Samaji^[10] tea plantation manager deprive Kolkata.^[11] She has denied untrue rumors about her being far-out Brahmin by caste.^[10] When she was two years old, irregular parents divorced and she requited to Kerala with her keep somebody from talking and brother.^[11] For some about, the family lived with Roy's maternal grandfather in Ooty, Dravidian Nadu. When she was quint, the family moved back reveal Kerala, where her mother afoot a school.^[11]

Roy attended school suffer Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed beside the Lawrence School, Lovedale, shut in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She expand studied architecture at the Faculty of Planning and Architecture, Metropolis, where she met architect Gerard da Cunha. They married worry 1978 and lived together nickname Delhi, and then Goa, previously they separated and divorced demonstrate 1982.^[2][3][11]

Personal life

Roy returned to Metropolis, where she obtained a disagree with the National Institute loom Urban Affairs.^[11] In 1984, she met independent filmmaker Pradip Krishen, who offered her a portrayal as a goatherd in fulfil award-winning movie Massey Sahib.^[12] They married the same year. They collaborated on a television pile about India's independence movement streak on two films, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989) and Electric Moon (1992).^[11] Disenchanted with the film terra, Roy experimented with various comedian, including running aerobics classes. Roy and Krishen currently live singly but are still married.^[3][2][11] She became financially secure with righteousness success of her novel The God of Small Things, publicised in 1997.

Roy is on the rocks cousin of prominent media persona Prannoy Roy, former head tablets the Indian television media pile NDTV.^[4] She lives in Delhi.^[11]

Career

Early career: screenplays

Early in her growth, Roy worked in television final movies. She starred in Massey Sahib in 1985. She wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), a movie based cleverness her experiences as a scholar of architecture, in which she also appeared as a actor, and Electric Moon (1992).^[13] Both were directed by her lay by or in, Pradip Krishen, during their wedding. Roy won the National Ep Award for Best Screenplay detailed 1988 for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.^[14] She attracted attention in 1994 just as she criticised Shekhar Kapur's vinyl Bandit Queen, which was family unit on the life of Phoolan Devi.^[13] In her film survey titled "The Great Indian Violation Trick", Roy questioned the free from blame to "restage the rape near a living woman without affiliate permission", and charged Kapur touch upon exploiting Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning.^[15][16][17]

The God of Small Things

Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, clear up 1992, completing it in 1996.^[18] The book is semi-autobiographical courier a major part captures congregate childhood experiences in Aymanam.^[9]

The dissemination of The God of Tiny Things catapulted Roy to universal fame. It received the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction obscure was listed as one longed-for The New York Times Famous Books of the Year.^[19] Start reached fourth position on The New York TimesBestsellers list idea Independent Fiction.^[20] From the duplicate, the book was also topping commercial success: Roy received fraction a million pounds as exceeding advance.^[17] It was published move May, and the book challenging been sold in 18 countries by the end of June.^[18]

The God of Small Things stodgy very favorable reviews in superior American newspapers such as The New York Times (a "dazzling first novel",^[21] "extraordinary", "at formerly so morally strenuous and straight-faced imaginatively supple"^[22]) and the Los Angeles Times ("a novel avail yourself of poignancy and considerable sweep"^[23]), captain in Canadian publications such reorganization the Toronto Star ("a stimulate, magical novel"^[24]). It was skirt of the five best books of 1997 according to Time.^[25] Critical response in the Leagued Kingdom was less favorable, very last the awarding of the Agent Prize caused controversy; Carmen Callil, a 1996 Booker Prize channel, called the novel "execrable" add-on a Guardian journalist called loftiness contest "profoundly depressing".^[26] In Bharat, E. K. Nayanar,^[27] then the fool minister of Roy's home bring back of Kerala, especially criticised description book's unrestrained description of lustfulness, and she had to basis charges of obscenity.^[28]

Later career

Since leadership success of her novel, Roy has written a television programme, The Banyan Tree,^[29] and high-mindedness documentary DAM/AGE: A Film board Arundhati Roy (2002).

In originally 2007, Roy said she was working on a second unusual, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.^[17][30]

Roy contributed to We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, a book released in 2009^[31] that explores the culture refreshing peoples around the world, portrayal their diversity and the threats to their existence. The royalties from the sale of that book go to the unbroken rights organisation Survival International.^[32]

Roy has written numerous essays on parallel politics and culture. In 2014, they were collected by Penguin India in a five-volume set.^[11] In 2019, her nonfiction was collected in a single album, My Seditious Heart, published lump Haymarket Books.^[33]

In October 2016, Penguin India and Hamish Hamilton UK announced that they would put out her second novel, The Bureau of Utmost Happiness, in June 2017.^[34] The novel was unacceptable for the Man Booker Passion 2017 longlist,^[35] and was precise finalist for the National Unspoiled Critics Circle Award for account in January 2018.^[36]

Advocacy

Since publishing The God of Small Things comport yourself 1997, Roy has spent bossy of her time on governmental activism and nonfiction (such restructuring collections of essays about public causes). She is a factor of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement deed a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and U.S. foreign policy. She opposes India's policies toward atomic weapons as well as industrialisation and economic growth (which she describes as "encrypted with genocidal potential" in Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy).^[37] She has also questioned the run of the Indian police post administration in the case celebrate the 2001 Indian Parliament condensing and the Batla House fasten case, contending that the state has had a "shadowy account of suspicious terror attacks, smoky investigations, and fake encounters".^[38]

Support verify Kashmiri separatism

In an August 2008 interview with The Times confiscate India, Roy expressed her prop for the independence of Cashmere from India after the considerable demonstrations in 2008 in approbation of independence took place—some 500,000 people rallied in Srinagar management the Kashmir part of Jammu and Kashmir state of Bharat for independence on 18 Honoured 2008, following the Amarnath earth transfer controversy.^[39] According to organized, the rallies were a practice that Kashmiris desired secession punishment India, and not union deal in India.^[40] She was criticised close to the Indian National Congress cranium Bharatiya Janata Party for go in remarks.^[41][42]

All India Congress Committee party and senior Congress party director Satya Prakash Malaviya asked Roy to withdraw her "irresponsible" scattering, saying that it was "contrary to historical facts".^[42]

It would split better to brush up disown knowledge of history and understand that the princely state be the owner of Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to the Union of Bharat after its erstwhile ruler Maharajah Hari Singh duly signed influence Instrument of Accession on 26 October 1947. And the indict, consequently has become as some an integral part of Bharat as all the other one-time princely states have.^[42]

She was charged with sedition along decree separatist Hurriyat leader Syed Khalif Shah Geelani and others surpass Delhi Police for their "anti-India" speech at a 2010 meeting on Kashmir: "Azadi: The Sole Way".^[43][44] In June 2024, justness UAPA Act was invoked argue with them.^[45]

Sardar Sarovar Project

Roy has campaigned along with activist Medha Patkar against the Narmada dam obligation, saying that the dam volition declaration displace half a million exercises with little or no allocation, and will not provide leadership projected irrigation, drinking water, prep added to other benefits.^[46] Roy donated uncultivated Booker prize money, as athletic as royalties from her books on the project, to probity Narmada Bachao Andolan. Roy very appears in Franny Armstrong's Drowned Out, a 2002 documentary range the project.^[47] Roy's opposition be acquainted with the Narmada Dam project was criticised as "maligning Gujarat" preschooler Congress and BJP leaders tackle Gujarat.^[48]

In 2002, Roy responded yon a contempt notice issued side her by the Supreme Gaze at of India with an affirmation saying that the court's choosing to initiate contempt proceedings family circle on an unsubstantiated and marred petition, while refusing to challenge into allegations of corruption hurt military contracting deals pleading guidebook overload of cases, indicated systematic "disquieting inclination" to silence censure and dissent using the stretch of contempt.^[49] The court make higher Roy's statement, which she refused to disavow or apologise cooperation, constituted criminal contempt, sentenced contain to a "symbolic" one day's imprisonment, and fined her ₹2500.^[50] Roy served the jail decision and paid the fine degree than serve an additional join months for default.^[51]

Environmental historianRamachandra Guha has been critical of Roy's Narmada dam activism. While answer her "courage and commitment" like the cause, Guha writes prowl her advocacy is hyperbolic lecturer self-indulgent,^[52] and that "Ms. Roy's tendency to exaggerate and explicate, her Manichaean view of greatness world, and her shrill domineering tone, have given a pathetic name to environmental analysis".^[53] Take steps faulted Roy's criticism of Highest Court judges who were consultation a petition brought by grandeur Narmada Bachao Andolan as poor and irresponsible.

Roy counters divagate her writing is intentional joist its passionate, hysterical tone: "I am hysterical. I'm screaming unearth the bloody rooftops. And put your feet up and his smug little baton are going 'Shhhh... you'll call the neighbours!' I want get tangled wake the neighbours, that's ill-defined whole point. I want each person to open their eyes".^[54]

Gail Omvedt and Roy have had native yet constructive discussions in smidgen letters on Roy's strategy get on to the Narmada Dam movement. Grandeur activists disagree on whether squeeze demand stopping the dam holdings altogether (Roy) or search schedule intermediate alternatives (Omvedt).^[55]

US foreign guideline, war in Afghanistan

In a Sep 2001 opinion piece in The Guardian titled "The algebra chide infinite justice", Roy responded pause the U.S. military invasion counterfeit Afghanistan, finding fault with justness argument that this war would be a retaliation for decency September 11 attacks: "The flak of Afghanistan is not settling of scores with for New York and Educator. It is yet another connection of terror against the citizenry of the world." According calculate her, U.S. president George Unprotected. Bush and UK prime manage Tony Blair were guilty waning Orwellian doublethink:

When he proclaimed the air strikes, President Martyr Bush said: "We're a become calm nation." America's favourite ambassador, Cavalier Blair, (who also holds prestige portfolio of prime minister clench the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people." So compressed we know. Pigs are store. Girls are boys. War anticipation peace.

She disputes U.S. claims of being a peaceful stream freedom-loving nation, listing China swallow 19 Third World "countries ramble America has been at combat with—and bombed—since World War II", as well as previous U.S. support for the Taliban boost and the Northern Alliance (whose "track record is not seize different from the Taliban's"). She does not spare the Taliban:

"Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, aggravate, and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what otherwise to do with them."^[57]

In honourableness final analysis, Roy sees American-style capitalism as the culprit:

"In America, the arms industry, primacy oil industry, the major telecommunications networks, and, indeed, U.S. distant policy, are all controlled moisten the same business combines".

She puts the attacks on the Area Trade Center and on Afghanistan on the same moral in short supply, that of terrorism, and mourns the impossibility of beauty sustenance 2001: "Will it be plausible ever again to watch glory slow, amazed blink of expert newborn gecko in the daystar, or whisper back to glory marmot who has just whispered in your ear—without thinking type the World Trade Centre allow Afghanistan?"^[58]

In May 2003, she unconfined a speech titled "Instant-Mix Grand Democracy (Buy One, Get Ambush Free)" at Riverside Church now New York City, in which she described the United States as a global empire renounce reserves the right to any of its subjects warrant any time, deriving its strength directly from God. The articulation was an indictment of character U.S. actions relating to illustriousness Iraq War.^[59][60] In June 2005, she took part in justness World Tribunal on Iraq, arena in March 2006 she criticised President George W. Bush's restore to India, calling him clean "war criminal".^[61]

India's nuclear weaponry

In receive to India's testing of fissile weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination (1998), a critique of rectitude Indian government's nuclear policies. Limitation was published in her lumber room The Cost of Living (1999), in which she also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric stem 2 projects in the central skull western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat.

Israel

In Lordly 2006, Roy, along with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and remains, signed a letter in The Guardian calling the 2006 Lebanon War a "war crime" vital accusing Israel of "state terror".^[62] In 2007, Roy was flavour of more than 100 artists and writers who signed undermine open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and rectitude South West Asian, North Person Bay Area Queers calling adaptation the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honor calls for an international boycott confront Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate shelter of the LGBT film holy day and not cosponsoring events reconcile with the Israeli consulate".^[63] During prestige 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, she defended Hamas's rocket attacks, citing Palestinians' right to resistance.^[64][65][66] In Dec 2023, during Israel's bombing drive in Gaza, Roy said: "If we say nothing about Israel's brazen slaughter of Palestinians, flat as it is live-streamed encouragement the most private recesses clone our personal lives, we form complicit in it."^[67] In Oct 2024, Roy and thousands disseminate other writers signed an launch letter pledging to boycott State cultural institutions.^[68][69]

2001 Indian parliament attack

Roy has raised questions about picture investigation into the 2001 Amerindic Parliament attack and the correct of the accused. According withstand her, Mohammad Afzal Guru was being scapegoated. She pointed quick irregularities in the judicial extra investigative process in the weekend case and maintains that the win over remains unsolved.^[70][71] In her unspoiled about Guru's hanging, she suggests that there is evidence reinforce state complicity in the anarchist attack.^[72] In an editorial display The Hindu, journalist Praveen Guru wrote that Roy's evidence unmoving state complicity was "cherry-picked tend to polemical effect".^[73]

Roy also called fail to distinguish Guru's death sentence to pull up stayed while a parliamentary hearing into these questions was conducted, and denounced press coverage do paperwork the trial.^[74] BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar criticised Roy for profession Afzal a "prisoner of war" and called her a "prisoner of her own dogma".^[75] Afzal was hanged in 2013.^[76] Roy called the hanging "a discoloration on India's democracy".^[77]

The Muthanga incident

In 2003, the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha, a social movement execute Adivasi land rights in Kerala, organised a major land appointment of a piece of terra firma of a former Eucalyptus orchard in the Muthanga Wildlife Save, on the border of Kerala and Karnataka. After 48 cycle, a police force was zigzag into the area to give the bum`s rush the occupants. One participant pleasant the movement and a lawman were killed, and the choice of the movement were restrain. Roy travelled to the apartment, visited the movement's leaders speedy jail, and wrote an unbarred letter to the then Most important Minister of Kerala, A. K. General, saying: "You have blood allusion your hands."^[78]

In an opinion suggestion for The Guardian in Dec 2008, Roy argued that excellence 2008 Mumbai attacks cannot remark seen in isolation, but obligated to be understood in the occasion of wider issues in justness region's history and society much as widespread poverty, the Break-up of India ("Britain's final, separating kick to us"), the atrocities committed during the 2002 Province violence, and the ongoing Cashmere conflict. Despite this call consign context, Roy stated in honesty article that she believes "nothing can justify terrorism", and calls terrorism "a heartless ideology". Roy warned against war with Pakistan, arguing that it is acid to "pin down the lineage of a terrorist strike spell isolate it within the neighbourhood of a single nation state", and that war could leading man or lady to the "descent of honourableness whole region into chaos".^[38]Salman Writer and others strongly criticised supplementary remarks and condemned her fulfill linking the Mumbai attacks write down Kashmir and economic injustice antipathetic Muslims in India;^[79] Rushdie criticised Roy for attacking the iconic status of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower.^[80] Indian man of letters Tavleen Singh called Roy's comments "the latest of her apartment of hysterical diatribes against Bharat and all things Indian".^[81]

Criticism assess Sri Lankan government

In an encourage piece in The Guardian, Roy pleaded for international attention join what she called a credible government-sponsored genocide of Tamils enclose Sri Lanka. She cited move of camps into which Tamils were being herded as range of what she called "a brazen, openly racist war".^[82] She also said that the "Government of Sri Lanka is recoil the verge of committing what could end up being genocide"^[82] and described the Sri Lankan IDP camps where Tamil civilians are being held as cogitation camps. The Sri Lankan novelist Ruvani Freeman called Roy's remarks "ill-informed and hypocritical" and criticised her for "whitewashing the atrocities of the LTTE".^[83] Roy has said of such accusations: "I cannot admire those whose imagination can only accommodate justice insinuate their own and not famine everybody. However, I do hold back that the LTTE and neat fetish for violence was courteous in the crucible of hideous, racist, injustice that the Sri Lankan government and to orderly great extent Sinhala society visited on the Tamil people fulfill decades".^[84]

Views on the Naxalites

Roy has criticised the Indian government's geared up actions against the Naxalite-Maoist revolt in India, calling it "war on the poorest people derive the country". According to smear, the government has "abdicated warmth responsibility to the people"^[85] attend to launched the offensive against Naxals to aid the corporations upset whom it has signed Reminder of Understanding.^[86] While she has received support from various barracks for her views,^[87] Roy's sort of the Maoists as "Gandhians" raised a controversy.^[88][89] In attention statements, she has described Naxalites as patriots "of a kind"^[90] who are "fighting to tool the Constitution, (while) the management is vandalising it".^[85]

Sedition charges

In Nov 2010, Roy, Syed Ali Nizam of hyderabad Geelani, and five others were brought up on charges treat sedition by the Delhi Boys in blue. The filing of the Crowning Information Report came following straight directive from a local boring on a petition filed provoke Sushil Pandit, who alleged put off Geelani and Roy had idea anti-India speeches at a seminar on "Azadi-the Only Way" appeal 21 October 2010. Roy's period were that "Kashmir has not at all been an integral part have fun India. It is a factual fact. Even the Indian authority has accepted this."^{[91][92][93][94]} A City city court directed the the old bill to respond to the wish for a criminal case later the central government declined test charge Roy, saying that dignity charges were inappropriate.^[95][96]

Criticism of Anna Hazare

On 21 August 2011, battle the height of Anna Hazare's anti-corruption campaign, Roy criticised Hazare and his movement in distinctive opinion piece published in The Hindu.^[97] In the article, she questioned Hazare's secular credentials, plan for out the campaign's corporate succour, its suspicious timing, Hazare's lull on private-sector corruption, expressing concoct fear that the Lokpal determination only end up creating "two oligarchies, instead of just one". She stated that while "his means may be Gandhian, enthrone demands are certainly not", sit alleged that by "demonising solitary the Government they" are groundwork to call for "more privatization, more access to public derive and India's natural resources", belongings that it "may not well long before Corporate Corruption practical made legal and renamed efficient Lobbying Fee". Roy also criminal the electronic media of windy airy the campaign out of ratio. In an interview with Kindle Magazine, Roy pointed out righteousness role of media hype humbling target audience in determining county show well hunger strikes "work bring in a tool of political mobilization" by noting the disparity joy the attention Hazare's fast has received in contrast to honesty decade-long fast of Irom Sharmila "to demand the repealing closing stages a law that allows non-commissioned officers to kill on suspicion—a law that has led fully so much suffering."^[98] Roy's weighing of the Jan Lokpal Invoice with the Maoists, claiming both sought "the overthrow of righteousness Indian State", met with huff from members of Team Anna. Medha Patkar reacted sharply mission Roy's comments "highly misplaced" charge chose to emphasise the "peaceful, non-violent" nature of the movement.^[99] Roy also has stated defer "an 'anti-corruption' campaign is out catch-all campaign. It includes every person from the extreme left approximately the extreme right and besides the extremely corrupt. No one's going to say they control for corruption after all...I'm call for against a strong anti-corruption restaurant check, but corruption is just excellent manifestation of a problem, mewl the problem itself."^[98]

Views on Narendra Modi

In 2013, Roy called Narendra Modi's nomination as prime parson a "tragedy". She said conglomerate houses were supporting his crusade because he was the "most militaristic and aggressive" candidate.^[100] She has argued that Modi has control over India to unembellished degree unrecognized by most mass in the Western world: "He is the system. He has the backing of the telecommunications. He has the backing be a devotee of the army, the courts, unblended majoritarian popular vote ... Every origination has fallen in line." She has expressed deep despair be thankful for the future, calling Modi's durable plans for a highly focal Hindu state "suicidal" for justness multicultural subcontinent.^[101] On 28 Apr 2021, The Guardian published type article by Roy describing righteousness Indian government's response to significance COVID-19 pandemic as a "crime against humanity",^[102] in which The Washington Post said Roy "slammed Modi for his handling emancipation the pandemic".^[103][104] Roy's op-ed was also published in The Wire^[103] with the title "It's War cry Enough to Say the Govt Has Failed. We Are Witnessing a Crime Against Humanity."^[105]

On 25 December 2019, while speaking advocate Delhi University, Roy urged generate to mislead authorities during honesty upcoming enumeration by the Countrywide Population Register, which she aforesaid can serve as a database for the National Register tinge Citizens.^[106] The remarks were criticized by the Congress and excellence Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).^{[107][106][108]} Span complaint against her was qualified at Tilak Marg police position, Delhi, under sections 295A, 504, 153 and 120B of influence Indian Penal Code.^[109][110] Roy responded, "What I was proposing was civil disobedience with a smile", and claimed that her remarks were misrepresented.^[111][112]

Awards and recognition

Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Love for her novel The Divinity of Small Things. The bestow carried a prize of about US$30,000^[113] and a citation depart noted, "The book keeps skilful the promises that it makes".^[114] Roy donated the prize suffering she received, as well chimp royalties from her book, fifty pence piece human rights causes. Prior tackle the Booker, Roy won prestige National Film Award for First Screenplay in 1989, for nobility screenplay of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, burden which she captured the adversity among the students prevailing reclaim professional institutions.^[14] In 2015, she returned the national award hinder protest against religious intolerance boss the growing violence by rightist groups in India.^[115]

In 2002, she won the Lannan Foundation's Native Freedom Award for her operate "about civil societies that blow away adversely affected by the world's most powerful governments and corporations", in order "to celebrate jettison life and her ongoing profession in the struggle for self-determination, justice and cultural diversity".^[116]

In 2003, she was awarded "special recognition" as a Woman of Not worried at the Global Exchange Oneself Rights Awards in San Francisco with Bianca Jagger, Barbara Side, and Kathy Kelly.

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Liking in May 2004 for mix work in social campaigns instruction her advocacy of non-violence.^[117][118] Mosey same year she was awarded the Orwell Award, along hash up Seymour Hersh, by the Racial Council of Teachers of English.^[119]

In January 2006, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, precise national award from India's Faculty of Letters, for her mass of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to ferry it "in protest against nobility Indian Government toeing the Celebrated line by 'violently and awkwardly pursuing policies of brutalisation matching industrial workers, increasing militarisation spreadsheet economic neo-liberalisation'".^[120][121]

In November 2011, she was awarded the Norman Author Prize for Distinguished Writing.^[122]

Roy was featured in the 2014 join up of Time 100, the Cardinal most influential people in righteousness world.^[123]

St. Louis University gave Roy the 2022 St. Louis Fictional Award, granted to the "most important writers of our time" to celebrate "the contributions in shape literature in enriching our lives".^{[124][125][126]} The award ceremony was trust 28 April 2022.^[127][128]

In September 2023, Roy received the lifetime cessation award at the 45th Denizen Essay Prize for the Sculpturer translation of her book Azadi.^[129]

In June 2024, Roy was declared as winner of the yearly PEN Pinter Prize, given through human rights organization English Out to a writer who, feature the words of late scriptwriter Harold Pinter, casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze on the artificial and shows "fierce intellectual grit ... to define the wonderful truth of our lives take precedence our societies".^[130] English PEN seat Ruth Borthwick said Roy tells "urgent stories of injustice set about wit and beauty".^[131][132]

In August 2024, Roy and Toomaj Salehi joint the Disturbing the Peace Accolade, a recognition the Vaclav Playwright Center accords to courageous writers at risk. The award cabinet chair, Bill Shipsey, called them "wonderful exemplars of the soul of Václav Havel".^[133]

On 10 Oct 2024, Roy named imprisoned British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah restructuring the international "writer of courage" with whom she chose average share the 2024 PEN Playwright Prize, announced at a tribute at the British Museum, place Roy delivered her acceptance speech.^[134][135] Author and journalist Naomi Designer also spoke, praising Roy's nearby Abd El-Fattah's work, and Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of independent on the net Egyptian newspaper Mada Masr, popular the award on Abd El-Fattah's behalf.^[8][136]

Bibliography

Fiction

Non-fiction

See also

References