Arundhati Roy

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Arundhati Roy (2013)

Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born November 24, 1961 in Shillong , Meghalaya ) is an Indian writer , screenwriter, political activist and globalization critic . In addition to the novel The God of Little Things , she wrote several political non-fiction books and numerous essays . In 2017 her second novel The Ministry of Extreme Happiness was published .

Life

childhood

Arundhati Roy's mother Mary Roy comes from Kerala in southern India and is a Thomas Christian , her father is a Hindu from Bengal and the owner of a tea plantation. She spent her childhood in Aymanam in the southern Indian state of Kerala until she moved to Delhi at the age of 16 , where she still lives today. At first she lived there in a small hut with a tin roof in the Feroz Shah Kotla district and earned her living by collecting and selling empty bottles. Eventually she began studying at the Delhi School of Architecture , where she also met her first husband, Gerard da Cunha.

Second marriage and film

In 1984 she met the filmmaker Pradip Krishen , who became her second husband. It was through him that she became interested in film. She played minor roles herself - including in Krishen's award-winning film Massey Sahib  - and began writing scripts ( In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones , Electric Moon and the television series Banyan Tree ).

Writing and Booker Prize

In 1992 she began work on her first novel, which was published in 1997 under the title The God of Little Things . The semi-biographical novel largely tells of her own childhood in an upper-class Christian family in the southern Indian state of Kerala. The novel touches on essential topics of India such as the caste system , the role of women, the life of Syrian Christians in Kerala and the role of the communist party especially in Kerala. The manuscript was sent to three publishers in the UK by Pankaj Mishra , editor of Harper & Collins, and it generated great interest. Before she could make a final decision, David Godwin, the third recipient of her manuscript, boarded a plane to India to become Arundhati Roy's first agent: “obviously, the book had touched him enough to get on a plane and come to a strange country ”.

Godwin went to work and within a short time eight publishers were bidding large sums for the rights to publish in the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

On the occasion of a visit to Vienna, Godwin ordered his author to New York to sign a contract with the renowned publishing house Random House . She received £ 500,000 for international publication rights in 21 countries.

In the year of publication, she was awarded the British Booker Literature Prize for this novel and quickly became internationally known. Rights to the book were sold in 21 countries.

Arundhati Roy (2010)

Political activity

As a result, she used her fame to draw attention to her political concerns. In a series of essays and speeches, she first attacked nuclear armament in India and neighboring Pakistan as well as Hindu nationalism ( Hindutva ) in her homeland. Soon she expanded her activities to include the participation in protest events against a dam project in the Narmada , since such buildings are often carried out at the expense of the living space of the practically lawless and poorest population groups (especially the Dalit and Adivasi ), as described in “The Politics of Power “Writes. Thanks to her popularity, Roy drew the attention of national and international media to the grievances with her participation.

Her writing now concentrated entirely on the representation and criticism of political and social issues. In her texts she took a stand against the " war on terror " led by the US government , the Iraq war and the policies of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization . This made her one of the best-known spokespersons for environmental protection , peace and anti-globalization movements far beyond India .

In 2014 she wrote an introduction to the critical edition of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste under the title The Doctor and the Saint . In it she works out the contrast between Ambedkar and Gandhi . Ambedkar comes from the layer of the Untouchables ( Dalits ) and in his most famous and most influential writing calls for the abolition of caste systems and the inextricably linked Hinduism , while Gandhi himself was Vaishya and, contrary to his statements about the lower castes, never questioned the oppressive structure of the caste system and was marked in his personal life by contempt for the socially weak.

In 2002, she was sentenced to one day in prison by the Indian Supreme Court in New Delhi for disobeying the court on accusing judges of suppressing protests against the Narmada dam project .

In 2004 Arundhati Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her social commitment and her advocacy for nonviolence .

In 2005 Arundhati Roy turned down the Sahitya Akademi Award, India's highest literary prize. According to media reports, Roy reportedly wrote in a letter to the state-funded Sahitya Academy that she felt very honored but could not accept the award because she disgusted various aspects of Indian government policy. As points of criticism, she named, for example, the possession of nuclear weapons and the construction of large dams.

On November 5, 2015, Arundhati Roy announced along with 23 other artists that they would return their national honors in protest. Roy, who returned her 1989 National Award for Best Screenplay, made explicit reference in a newspaper article to the lynching of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh by fanatical Hindus after the rumor had spread that he had eaten beef. She described the process as an expression of a general mood in the country under which Muslims, Christians and Dalits had to live in constant fear. She complained that it was no longer possible for intellectuals in India to point out that Hindus were responsible for this fear, only accepting their religiously based view of the circumstances and suppressing the sufferings of the victims.

Awards

Works

  • The god of little things . Karl Blessing, Munich, 1997, ISBN 3-442-72468-6 (original: The God of Small Things, Harper Collins, London 1997).
  • The politics of power . Goldmann, 2002, ISBN 3-442-72987-4 (original: The Cost of Living ).
  • Noam Chomsky , Eduardo Galeano , Arundhati Roy, and others. a .: attack on freedom? The attacks in the USA and the "New World Order". Backgrounds, analyzes, positions . Ed .: Wolfgang Haug . 2nd Edition. Nevertheless, Verlagsgenossenschaft, Grafenau 2002, ISBN 3-931786-25-0 (collection of 17th articles).
  • Truth and power . Goldmann, 2004, ISBN 3-442-73304-9 (interviews by David Barsamian, foreword by Naomi Klein ).
  • Was talk . South End Press, 2003, ISBN 0-89608-724-7 .
  • An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire . South End Press, 2004, ISBN 0-89608-727-1 .
  • Public Power in the Age of Empire . Seven Stories Press, 2004, ISBN 1-58322-682-6 .
  • The Algebra of Infinite Justice . Flamingo / Harper Collins, London 2002, ISBN 0-00-714949-2 .
  • From the workshop of democracy . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-10-066066-4 (original: Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Nots on Democracy ).
  • Hike with the comrades: With the guerrillas in the jungle of Central India . Zambon-Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-88975-180-5 (original: Walking with the Comrades ).
  • The Doctor and the Saint. Introduction and essay on BR Ambedkar: Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition. Navayana 2014, ISBN 978-81-89059-63-7 .
  • Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Haymarket Books, Chicago 2014, ISBN 978-1-60846-385-5 (on the excesses of globalized capitalism in India).
  • The Ministry of Utmost Happiness . Penguin India, 2017, ISBN 978-0-670-08963-5 (English, 464 pages).

Essays and interviews

According to topicality:

literature

  • Bernhard Mann : Broken identities: Indian social structure in the “cultural lag”. About: Arundhati Roy, The God of Little Things. In: Study Society for Social Sciences and Political Education (Hrsg.): Sozialwissenschaftliche Umschau. February 2003, ISSN  1610-3300 , pp. 53-59.
  • Claire Messud : Stranger things. In: Financial Times . June 3, 2017, S. L&A 11 (review).

Web links

Commons : Arundhati Roy  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Arundhati Roy  - Quotes

Interviews:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica: Arundhati Roy (English)
  2. ↑ femundo: The Ministry of extreme happiness: Bitter reality in the colorful garb. Retrieved September 17, 2017 .
  3. ^ The Guardian : The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy review: a bright mosaic. Accessed June 2, 2017.
  4. ↑ Arundhati Roy: The Doctor and the Saint. In The Caravan. March 1, 2014 (English; full text of the introduction).
  5. ^ A b Arundhathi Roy Why I am returning my award. In: The Indian Express. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
  6. ↑ Ana Lehmann: Loved, hated, feared: Arundhati Roy. In: Deutsche Welle . March 8, 2010.
  7. ↑ Arundhati Roy, 23 others return awards over intolerance ( Memento from November 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: eNewspaper of India. November 5, 2015, accessed November 6, 2015.
  8. ^ Announcement: Bruno Kreisky Prize for the Political Book 2017 goes to Arundhati Roy. In: OTS. January 9, 2018, accessed January 17, 2018.
  9. ↑ Arundhati Roy: Arundhati Roy on Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen: The Great Indian Rape-Trick (1st part). (No longer available online.) In: sawnet.org. August 22, 1994, archived from the original on April 14, 2016 ; accessed on April 26, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Arundhati Roy: Arundhati Roy on Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen: The Great Indian Rape-Trick (2nd part). (No longer available online.) In: sawnet.org. September 23, 1994, archived from the original on April 15, 2016 ; accessed on April 26, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Roy, Arundhati
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roy, Suzanna Arundhati (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian writer, political activist and critic of globalization
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Shillong , Meghalaya