The god of little things

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The God of Little Things is a semi-autobiographical book by the Indian writer and political activist Arundhati Roy . It is her first novel.

On April 4, 1997, the English version of the book was published in New Delhi under the title The God of Small Things ; The German translation followed in 1997 by Karl Blessing Verlag .

Since the novel won the Booker Prize in 1997 , Arundhati Roy has used her fame to raise awareness of social, environmental and political issues. The booker prize money and the royalties on some editions of her novel in Indian languages ​​were made available by the author to the civil rights movement against the Narmada dam - she also donated the majority of the following prize money to social issues and projects .

History of origin

After Arundhati Roy had worked on her first literary work for five years with the support of her family and her husband Pradip Krishen , in May 1996 she was not confident that she would be able to publish her book at all: “ It is a very fragile, personal book and I have never had any perspective about it. I considered going to an Indian publisher but they tend to give advances of Rs 5,000. However, I wasn't sure about finding a foreign publisher. I mean, why would anyone abroad be interested in the book? I am not very well educated. I haven't lived abroad. So it's not as though I am like Salman Rushdie or Vikram Seth .

While looking for an agent, she met Pankaj Mishra , then the editor of HarperCollins . Enthusiastic about her novel, he sent the manuscript to three British publishers in June 1996 with the comment “ This is the biggest book since Midnight's Children .

Within three days, two of the publishers were ready to submit offers for the publication rights. Since Arundhati Roy did not have a fax machine himself, the offers were sent to a neighbor. Before she could finally make up her mind, David Godwin, the third recipient of her manuscript, had 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 in a very short space of time eight publishers had submitted very high bids for British and continental European publishing rights. On the occasion of a visit to Vienna, Godwin ordered his author to New York, where the contract was signed with the renowned publishing house Random House and she received 500,000 pounds sterling for the international publication rights in 21 countries.

In September 1996 the contract was made public, and by the end of October 400,000 books had already been pre-ordered worldwide - the book has so far been published in 30 countries.

Awards

  • 1997 - Booker Prize
  • 2001 - Grand Prize of the World Academy of Cultures (“Grand Prix” of the “Académie Universelle de la Culture”), Paris
  • 2003 - Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation
  • 2006 - Literature Prize of the “ Sahitya Akademi ” of the Indian government, specifically for their non-fiction book The Algebra of Infinite Justice, ISBN 0-00-714949-2 - rejected by Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy (2013)

Arundhati Roy was the first author from India to win the prestigious Booker Prize on October 14, 1997 - notably in the 50th year of India's independence from the British Empire ; The God of Small Things is also the first debut work to be awarded the Booker Prize . "Dame" Gillian Beer , Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University and Chair of the Foundation Advisory Board, in her thanks on the occasion of the award ceremony:

With extraordinary linguistic inventiveness, Arundhati Roy funnels the history of south India through the eyes of seven-year-old twins. The story she tells is fundamental as well as local: it is about love and death, about lies and laws. Her narrative crackles with riddles and yet tells its tale quite clearly. We were all engrossed by this moving novel ”.

The Booker Prize has been awarded annually since 1969 to an author from the Commonwealth of Nations for the best novel and is one of the most important literary awards worldwide.

"The God of Little Things" (summary)

“'The God of Little Things' leaves no traces in the sand, no waves in the water, no reflection in the mirror. He is the god of that which is lost, of personal and everyday things, not the god of history, which cruelly forces the 'little things' into their course ... and: things can change in a single day. "

"The little things" in the novel

The focus of the novel is the story of the sensitive, imaginative and headstrong siblings Rahel and Estha - biologically dizygotious twins and fundamentally different from the outside, they form a spiritually inseparable whole unnoticed from the outside world, which was torn apart after the tragic death of two people in December 1969 becomes. Increasingly neglected by family members who deal with their own problems, Rahel grows up with her mother's family in Ayemenem, Estha with his father, who lives in Calcutta (since 2001 Kolkata).

Rahel and Estha come from a Syrian Orthodox , Anglophile family from the Indian middle class in Kerala, former, meanwhile impoverished large landowners and operators of the small canning factory “Paradise Pickles & Preserves” built by their grandmother (“Mammachi”) .

Map of Kerala, Kottayam District and City

The focus of action is the small town of Ayemenem (Arundhati Roy's hometown Aymanam), not far from Kottayam on the eastern edge of the Backwaters , a branched network of waterways in the hinterland of the Malabar Coast , in the southwestern state of Kerala , India .

The plot of the novel begins in 1993, with the return of Rahel from the USA and shortly before her brother Estha to the house of the multigenerational family. The novel constantly shifts to the events of the fateful December 1969 - when the twins are seven years old and give readers their imaginative view of "the little things" - and 1993, along with the use of terms in Malayalam , another aspect of Arundhati Roy's narrative style.

When Rahel was 31 years old, she returned to Ayemenem on a letter from her great-aunt, for the first time since studying and marrying an American - Larry McCaslin loved her very much, but could not understand how she thought and felt, so a separation was inevitable. Rahel and with her the readers begin to understand the background to the events in December 1969 as the story progresses. The smoldering misfortune of the family members took a completely tragic turn that year with the visit of Chacko's English-born ex-wife Margaret and her nine-year-old daughter Sophie Mol to Ayemenem after Margaret's second husband Joe died.

The story of Ammu is also told, the mother of the twins who was divorced from a Hindu from Bengal at a young age . Indian society and their own families do not give you a worthy place in everyday life in Kerala. Ammu rebels against her fate by illegally and without considering possible consequences, with Velutha she crosses the boundaries of the inexorable caste system.

The "unwritten laws that determine who should be loved and how" (and how much) also have an impact on the other characters of the novel described in episodes, in particular the female family members and the people from four generations closely related to them. Events that - obeying a 'ruthless logic' - within two weeks permanently shattered the already heavily burdened family ties and cost two people their lives in one day.

"The big things" in the novel

Parallel to the “little things”, the novel shows the social tensions in India in the late 1960s. 20 years after independence, which was far from being achieved, large parts of the upper and middle classes still feel deeply connected to the British Empire and fear the complete loss of their remaining privileges - "the big things" in Arundhati Roy's novel:

Syriac Christian Cheriapally Church in Kottayam
Kathakali dancers - chapter Kochu Thomban , in Malayalam meaning 'little elephant'
Kerala is due to its complex interweaving of cultures, traditions, political movements and religions often referred to as "God's own country" ( own land God called). Festival at Mahadevar Temple, Pandalam.

Other important topics are sexual exploitation , pedophilia (especially chapter Abhilash Talkies ), environmental destruction and the 'selling out of homeland' using the example of tourism (chapter God's own land ) as well as the loss of cultural identity (chapter Cochin Kangaroos and Kochu Thomban ), the Arundhati Roy also speaks in a drastic way.

All of this - “the big and small things” - play an essential role in Arundhati Roy's novel, told in retrospect from a thoroughly matriarchal- oriented perspective, rich in images, poetically and not without humor, so that even for the protagonists themselves, many connections only become apparent afterwards.

Characters of the novel

  • Rahel ( "without a middle name" ) - is the twin sister of Estha (18 minutes younger than him) and the daughter of Ammu and Baba . To a large extent, the story of the family is told from their perspective as a seven-year-old in 1969 and as a 31-year-old woman, with parts of the life stories of the family members inserted. Although outwardly very different from her twin brother, she shares her brother's feelings and thoughts on a deeply emotional level, just like hers, and forms with him, unnoticed by the outside world, a single personality and not two independent ones.
  • Estha (Esthappen Yako) - Rahel's twin brother decided to stop talking after traumatic childhood experiences in 1969. From the age of seven he lived separately from his sister and mother with his father in Calcutta until he was "returned" to his mother's family in 1993.
  • Ammu ("Mama") - Rahels and Estha's mother, the daughter of Mammachi and Pappachi , who was disappointed with their lives , returned to their parents' household after their early divorce, from which they once wanted to break out through an alleged "love marriage". Just as intelligent as her brother, she was not allowed to study as a woman, just as committed, her brother is legally the sole owner of the family business. As divorced and interdenominationally married, neither Indian society nor her family grant her a worthy place in everyday life, so that she rebels and illegally crosses the caste barriers.
  • Baby Kochamma (“little mother”, respectful salutation for “aunt”, actually Navomi Ipe ) - daughter of Aleyooti Ammachi and Reverend John Ipe (maternal great-grandparents of the twins), sister-in-law of Rahels and Estha's grandmother Mammachi. As a young woman she falls madly in love with Father Mulligan , converts and even becomes a nun for a year in order to get close to him. Remains (involuntarily) single, but therefore received a higher education, which does not alleviate her increasing bitterness and resentment towards her family with age.
  • Velutha Paapen (Urumban) - son of Veelya Paapen and Chella (Chinna) , brother of Kuttappen . His family comes from the Paravan- Dalit - caste , craftsmen and field workers, neighbors and key employees in the family business. Lover of Ammu, her very own "God of the little things", childhood friend and in a figurative sense "teacher of the little things" for Rahel and Estha. Velutha was beaten to death by the police in connection with the tragic events of December 1969.
  • Chacko - Ammus brother, adored by his mother, uncle of the twins. “Family philosopher and scholar ” and Oxford graduate. A Marxist by confession , but also unsuccessful, self-appointed director of the “Paradise Pickles” canning factory built by his mother. It is he who, as the intellectual and teacher of the twins, arouses their interest in their home history, their mother tongue Malayalam , in the "Empire" and its history and in the English language . On the other hand, as Ammu's brother, he reveals the worst of a traditionally feeling Indian middle-class man.
  • Margaret (Kochamma) - Chacko's ex-wife and mother of their child, Sophie Mol . She comes from England and lives there until her fateful visit to the family of her first husband at the end of 1969 after Joe, her second husband, was killed in an accident.
  • Sophie Mol - "Mol" means "little girl" in Malayalam. She is the twins' English cousin two years older and the daughter of Chacko and Margaret who died in a tragic accident in December 1969.
  • Mammachi ("grandmother", actually Soshamma Ipe ) - matriarch of the family, grandmother of Rahel, Estha and Sophie Mol who became blind in old age; despised as the overprotective mother of Chacko and absolutely indifferent to Ammu's life and fate. She is the founder of the once successful family business, a factory for pickles , jelly and jam. As a young woman a talented violinist, a career that Pappachi made impossible for her - exposed to constant abuse and humiliation together with Ammu until Pappachie's death.
  • Pappachi ("grandfather", actually Shri Benaan Ipe ) - father of Ammu and Chacko, husband of Mammachi. Envy of his wife any recognition and outwardly attaches importance to an “English lifestyle”: Former “ Entomologist of the Empire” (managing director), his greatest disappointment was that a butterfly species he discovered was not named after him. He takes his frustration out on his wife and stubborn daughter Ammu with her continued professional success, which Chacko ends after his return from England. Since then, Pappachi has not talked to Mammachi any more and would like to be seen from the outside as a “neglected victim” of a professionally successful woman who does not fulfill her “befitting duties” as a wife and householder.
  • Comrade KNM Pillai - leader of the local Communist Party, owner of a small printing company who, together with Baby Kochamma and Inspector Thomas Mathew, in mute unity, is to blame for the deaths of Velutha Paapen and Ammus.
  • Orange soda lemon soda man and Kari Saipu : Two pedophiles from Kottayam and Ayemenem.
  • Kochu Maria ("little Maria") - cook and housekeeper of the family: shares with Baby Kochamma a deep-seated bitterness and withdrawal into the world of TV soaps and a lost youth.
  • Baba ("Papa") - Rachel and Estha's father, from a Hindu family from Bengal , was charming and beguiling as a young man. For Ammu the possibility to escape from the parental home, but a debacle as a husband, a drinker who beats his wife (and children), puts Ammu in an extremely humiliating situation and is therefore abandoned by her.

Reviews

  • "The sharpness of their analysis of power relations - between classes or castes as well as between women and men or colonial countries and ex-colonies - and the boldness of their language shape their literature as well as their essays." (Amazon / Emma.)
  • “Arundhati Roy skilfully strings the various episodes together, so that the novel never runs the risk of breaking up into fragmentary individual parts. Their language is rich in images and poetic (especially in the atmospheric descriptions of nature) and not without humor. She often tells from the point of view of the two siblings, who perceive their environment in a typically childlike way, enriching it with imagination and describing it in a playful way ... In addition, Roy laments the current cultural sell-off of her home country, which is increasingly falling victim to westernization. In contrast to her current political commitment, she does not denounce vehemently. As a writer, Arundhati Roy tells gently, but with lasting effects: small incidents, ordinary things, destroyed and reconstructed. Provided with a new meaning. And suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story. ”(Buecher4um © Fevvers 2002.)
  • “The God of small things manages to describe the 'big things' in their inescapable rigidity using the apparent example of a family that is broken by their forbidden love. And how the little things either break or are twisted into disaster as a direct means of transport. The on the one hand oppressive and at the same time detached language magic of Arundhati Roy's first work captured in a strangely intense way. As if you can do both at once: read and enjoy. "(Kultur-insel.de.)
  • “Every now and then there are exceptional phenomena in literature. The Indian author Arundhati Roy is certainly such an exception. She is a pioneer in the fight for the rights of women and the oppressed classes in modern India. Reason enough to choose their first novel as an international bestseller, according to the world's publishers. It's actually a shame that The God of Little Things has become a terribly bad book ... "(Lettern.de.)
  • “The God of Little Things is a very poetic novel in his style of language and his narrative style, which one shouldn't just read in between. On the one hand, the book is long, but on the other hand, I was very fascinated by it. Advantageously, however, one should understand a little something about India's culture (caste system etc.) or at least be interested in it. ”(Literaturschock.de.)
  • “… The first time I read the novel, it was made more difficult for me because Roy jumps in time and often uses premonitions. Almost imperceptible changes in narrative perspectives are common. Her style is allegorically colorful, but often only consists of individual word sentences, peppered with a few Indian special words. Just one example: 'It was warm, the water. Graygreen. Like rippled silk. With fish in it '(p. 116). The words she wants to emphasize (I guess) Roy writes boldly with capital letters. Despite these obstacles, Roy manages impressive passages (Chapter 4, 'Abhilash Talkies' was a first high point), but sometimes it gets flat and the reader is infatuated with premonitions of impending bad events ... The great quality of the Booker Prize novel will only become apparent to me with the second Open up reading. After all, I already had the impression that a second reading can be worthwhile. "(Lesenkost.de.)
  • "Arundhati Roy masterfully composes a small story from many inconspicuous coincidences so skillfully that at the end a big story emerges that can be read again with profit and enjoyment." (Manuela Saselberger, review in the Literary Quartet, ZDF, August 14, 1997.)

Arundhati Roy on her novel

Arundhati Roy is quoted in excerpts from the genesis and the background of her novel:

  • I didn't know what I'd started really, I got a computer and started using it, finding out what it could do. I didn't know I was writing a book for a while. It took me five years to write 'The God of Small Things', but for first few months I was just fooling around before I realized what was happening and got down to writing the book properly.
  • A lot of the atmosphere of A God of Small Things is based on my experiences of what it was like to grow up in Kerala. Most interestingly, it was the only place in the world where religions coincide, there's Christianity, Hinduism, Marxism and Islam and they all live together and rub each other down. When I grew up it was the Marxism that was very strong, it was like the revolution was coming next week. I was aware of the different cultures when I was growing up and I'm still aware of them now. When you see all the competing beliefs against the same background you realize how they all wear each other down. To me, I couldn't think of a better location for a book about human beings.
  • To me 'the god of small things' is the inversion of God. God's a big thing and God's in control. 'The god of small things'… whether it's the way the children see things or whether it's the insect life in the book, or the fish or the stars - there is a not accepting of what we think of as adult boundaries. This small activity that goes on is the under life of the book. All sorts of boundaries are transgressed upon… A pattern, of how in these small events and in these small lives the world intrudes. And because of this, because of people being unprotected. the world and the social machine intrudes into the smallest, deepest core of their being and changes their life.
  • One of the chapters was called The God of Small Things, I don't know how that happened, I just remember Ammu's dream, who was the one armed man, the God of loss, the God of Small Things? When I read the book now I can't believe the amount of references there are to small things, but it was absolutely not the case that I started with the title and built the novel around it. At the last stage they knew they had to put their faith in fragility and stick to the small things, and I just can't believe how appropriate the title is.
  • For me, the way words and paragraphs fall on the page matters as well - the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel were so playful on the page ... Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter. ”“ An owl ”became“ A Nowl ”. "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetalsmell" ... Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot.
  • For me the structure of my story, the way it reveals itself was so important. My language is mine, it's the way I think and the way I write. You know, I don't scrabble around and try, and I don't sweat the language. But I really took a lot of care in designing the structure of the story, because for me the book is not about what happened but about how what happened affected people. So a little thing like a little boy making his Elvis Presley puff or a little girl looking at her plastic watch with the time painted onto it - these small things become very precious.
  • it isn't a book about India… It is a book about human nature.

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 (ed.): Sozialwissenschaftliche Umschau 2/2003, pp. 53–59. ISSN  1610-3300 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Arundhati Roy on Democracy Now! (English). For more articles / podtcasts on Arundhati Roy please Search DN! Use site .
  2. ^ Essay by Arundhati Roy on the Friends of River Narmada website .
  3. Interview with Arundhati Roy on the Friends of River Narmada website .
  4. a b Rediff On The NeT: Vir Sanghri meets Arundhati Roy (English).
  5. David Godwin, agent of Arundhati Roy (English).
  6. Website of the Lannan Foundation ( Memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Background information on the “2002 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize” (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lannan.org
  7. Website of the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Akademi of Letters ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Laureate of the “Sahitya Akademi” literary prize (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sahitya-akademi.org
  8. “The Algebra of Infinite Justice” on “Word-Power” ( memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.word-power.co.uk
  9. Word-Power website: Arundhati Roy Refuses Sahitya Akademi Award: A Letter to the Chairman - Arundhati Roy’s personal statement on the rejection of the Sahitya Akademi Award.
  10. Times of India website: Arundhati Roy declines Sahitya Akademi award (English).
  11. ^ "Dame", correctly "Dame Commander of the British Empire", is one of the highest honors in the Commonwealth of Nations or the equivalent of the title "Knight" ("Sir") given to men. The correct official address would also be “Lady Gillian Beer” or informally “Lady Gillian”.
  12. British Council website, Lady Gillian Beer ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.contemporarywriters.com
  13. Website sawnet.org: Acknowledgments on the occasion of the Booker Prize ( Memento of the original of February 27, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , from: The Guardian of October 14, 1997 (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sawnet.org
  14. Some impressions from Aymanam (Ayemenem in the novel) (English)
  15. Autobiographical parts of the novel, using the example of Arundhati Roy's parents' house (English).
  16. If Indian women get divorced, they expose themselves to a variety of social and economic problems. As part of her dissertation, Nathalie Peyer Strauss examines how women in the southern Indian city of Madurai deal with marital conflicts. Full article on: University of Zurich: Between Adjustment and Resistance .
  17. ^ Dilip M. Menon: Caste, nationalism, and communism in South India: Malabar, 1900-1948 . Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-521-41879-8 .
  18. ^ Ministry of Information for the State of Kerala, statistics as of 1991
  19. Interview on chitram.org: "A Life full of beginnings and no ends" ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.chitram.org
  20. Pit in the translator database of the VdÜ , 2019