Arundhati Roy Reveals Reason Why 'The God of Small Things' Did Not Become A Movie

New Delhi: Arundhati Roy’s much-awaited first work of memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me released on Thursday (August 28). A day before its release, the author spoke about her latest book at a private, closed-door gathering at New Delhi’s Oddbird Theatre.

She also explained why she did not want her Booker-winning debut novel, The God of Small Things, to be made into a movie.

Also Read | Arundhati Roy, A G Noorani, Among 25 Kashmir Books Banned by J&K Home Dept

The author said that she did not want to make it into a movie, as she wanted to keep it as a novel in itself.

“When I wrote The God of Small Things, there were so many people who wanted to make a movie out of it. I said, ‘No, but this is a novel. Its last stop is not a movie. It’s a thing in itself’, the author said.

Roy explained that although she had previously worked as a screenplay writer and made movies, she just wanted to write. She stated that her intention was to write something that was “expressly” not a movie.

Published in 1997, The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the same year.

Also Read | Arundhati Roy Wins Global Award For ‘Courageous Writers At Risk’

“So everything you do, you just try and see if there’s something that happens and I feel that the best way to address it is just directly with a non-fiction essay, an argument or whatever, breaking your head or trying to break the consensus that’s building up in the media, then I’ll do that,” she added.

Published by Penguin Random House India, Mother Mary Comes To Me is available for purchase across both online and offline stores.