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Presented in partnership with UBC Centre for Climate Justice and Indian Summer Festival.
Arundhati Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize and made her an international household name. She has gone on to publish multiple acclaimed books—including The Ministry of Utmost Happiness—and to challenge injustices around the world as a prominent political and environmental activist. Her impact has been recognized with the PEN Pinter Prize and Time’s 100 most influential people distinction—as well as sedition charges and prosecution by the Indian government. Get up close and personal with the author’s fascinating debut memoir.
Mother Mary Comes to Me is a soaring account of how Roy became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” Mary’s death in September 2022 prompted Roy to trace her complex relationship with the mother she ran away from at age eighteen. The author takes us on an intimate journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.
Roy speaks with award-winning journalist, author and activist—as well as her longtime friend—Naomi Klein, about her latest book and her work to date, the intricacies of thorny love, and living on the frontlines of humanism.