Arundhati Roy Wins Global Award For 'Courageous Writers at Risk' (image-X/KirkusReviews)
The United States-based non-profit organisation Vaclav Havel Center has picked author Arundhati Roy for the 2024 ‘Disturbing the Peace’ Award. Along with Roy, Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi has also been named for the award.
The God of Small Thigs author won the award for a Courageous Writer at Risk.
While announcing the award, jury member and author Salil Tripathi observed that Roy speaks for India’s “marginalised and dispossessed,” whose lands are taken away by big corporations, “who oppose India’s nuclear policies; who speak up for the Dalits, and who fight for their self-determination, making the comfortable afflicted, and offering comfort to the afflicted.”
Salehi is known for making music protesting political repression by the government of Iran.
Named after Vaclav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia (then Czech Republic), the non-profit organisation annually awards writers at risk for speaking out against injustice.
Following a 2010 convention, Roy was accused, among others, by the Delhi Police for her alleged “anti-India” speech. On June this year, Lieutenant governor of Delhi, Vinai Kumar Saxena sanctioned the prosecution of Roy and Hussain, a former professor at the Central University of Kashmir, under Section 45 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for the same.
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“The world remains in a state where governments continue to suppress inconvenient voices. But those voices remain unbending: these writers and artists have integrity, courage, and determination of the kind Havel displayed,” Tripathi said, while giving the award.
Some of the previous recipients of the award, which includes a $5,000 cash prize, include El-Fattah (2023), Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov (2022), Belarusian poet Dmitri Strotsev (2021), Cuban author Angel Santiesteban Prats (2020) among others.
