Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is an internationally known peace activist and Booker Prize winning author. Born to a Syrian Christian mother and a Bengali Hindu father in in South India, Roy grew up in Kerala and left the city for Delhi to study architecture. Early in her career, Roy wrote for television and films, screenwriting the movie In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, in which she also starred. In 1992, Roy began writing The God of Small Things, which was published in 1996 and sold almost immediately in 18 countries. The novel won the Booker prize, and Roy used the prize money and much of the royalties from the book to fund activist causes. Indeed, Roy has been an activist for most of her life, and is particularly involved in anti-globalization and anti-nuclear work. She is extremely critical of the U.S.’s imperial involvement in other nations.