She worked as a production designer while pursuing her architectural studies at the Delhi School of Architecture.
She has written two screenplays, including the 1992 television network Channel 4 production Electric Moon.
Together with her husband, the filmmaker Pradip Krishen, she resides in Delhi.
Her debut book, The God of Small Things, which has sold over six million copies worldwide, won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997.
The novel became an instant bestseller and was concurrently published in 16 languages and 19 countries, but it sparked outrage in India since it depicted a romance between a Syrian Christian and a Hindu “untouchable.”
It is the story of two twins, Estha and Rahel, their 23-year reunion after being separated, and their shared memories of the circumstances surrounding the unintentional death of their English cousin, Sophie Mol, in 1969.
The story is set in the rural district of Ayemenem in Kerala, in southern India.
A number of non-fiction books are also written by Arundhati Roy, including The Cost of Living (1999), a sharp criticism of the Indian government’s handling of the contentious Narmada Valley Dam Project and its nuclear testing programme.
In 2003, Arundhati Roy received the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom.
