Arundhati Roy (1961-), Youngest winner in the history of Booker, bagged the coveted prize for her debut novel and in the process became the first non-expatriate Indian to get this honour.

A regular fixture at the front pages of news media, she is firm in her conviction to support those who were forcefully driven out of their homes as a direct result of the construction of a dam across the Narmada River.

An architect by training, she used to work as an aerobics instructor at Delhi for sometime before making it big through her book ‘The God of Small Things’.Her maiden venture ‘The God of Small Things’ which bagged the Booker Prize, sold more than six million copies, and has since been translated to about forty languages.

She has now donned the role of an activist and is waging a battle against the construction of big dams in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

Arundhati, daughter of an insurgent

Arundhati Roy is the daughter of Mary Roy, a revolutionary in the true sense of the term. Mary Roy went to Supreme Court and won a public interest litigation case challenging the Syrian Christian inheritance law which said ‘a woman can inherit only one-fourth of her father's property or 5,000 rupees in 1986.’

In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court handed down a verdict giving equal status for women. This ruling gave Christian women an equal share, with their male siblings, in their father's property. Arundhati naturally inherited the mutinous spirit possessed by her mother.