She then began working on the manuscript for what would become The God of Small Things in 1992, completing it five years later.

Roy didn’t set out to be a novelist-she originally went to school for architecture, which she described as “a practical necessity” because “I needed to have a profession, I needed to earn my own living just to be able to escape what society would normally have had in store for me.” But she soon left the field to pursue work in India’s film industry, writing the screenplay for the movie In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1988), which won an Indian National Film Festival award for Best Screenplay. The God of Small Things was Roy's first novel.Īrundhati Roy Poses In New York / Jean-Christian Bourcart/GettyImages If you read the book, you’ll know that she wasn’t exactly a fan of Julie Andrews’s big-screen classic. Like Ammu, Roy’s mother was a divorcee who had to deal with the stigma of a failed marriage.Įven the family’s trips to see The Sound of Music have some basis in reality-in an interview, Roy recalled her family taking two-hour car rides to the city of Cochin to see the movie around seven times when she was a kid. This is where readers are introduced to Velutha, one of the workers at the factory and a member of India’s “untouchable” caste, who begins an ill-fated affair with Ammu, Rahel and Estha’s mother. Her grandmother also ran a pickle factory like the one owned by Rahel and Estha’s family. In the book, much of the action takes place in Ayemenem, India, the village where she grew up and saw the archaic caste system firsthand. Though The God of Small Things is a work of fiction, Roy took inspiration from her own life when crafting the story. Arundhati Roy drew upon her real life for many of the book’s details. Here are seven facts about Roy's unforgettable bestseller.

Roy then revisits the two as adults, who reunite and attempt to sift through their shared grief. As children, the two attempt to process the struggles of their mother, Ammu, and their extended family, with the book’s perspective filtered through their young eyes. The story of Estha and Rahel, fraternal siblings who struggle with the cultural influences of their native India, is at the heart of The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy’s groundbreaking 1997 novel.

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