Arundhati Roy, Writer of ‘God Of Small Things’, Awarded The PEN Pinter Prize 2024, for Outstanding Literary Merit
Arundhati Roy won the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize for her literary merit and unflinching perspective on global issues. Named after Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, the award honors writers who define societal truths. She will receive the prize on October 10 at the British Library.
Writer, essayist and activist Arundhati Roy has been awarded this year’s PEN Pinter Prize. This award is bestowed on writers for their “outstanding literary merit” and their “unflinching” look at the world.
The award was launched in honour of Nobel Prize Winner and playwright Harold Pinter by the literary society and NGO English PEN. Courageous writers are recognized who, in Harold Pinter’s words, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world and shows 'a fierce, intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies'.”
Arundhati Roy is known to be vocal about diverse issues in India. The Booker Prize winning author has touched upon crucial and debatable topics like human rights issues, independence of Kashmir, anti-globalization, nuclear weapons, Indian administration and so on.
This award comes at a time, when the author has faced action from Indian officials, for her remarks on Kashmir, fourteen years ago.
Ruth Borthwick, Khalid Abdalla, and Roger Robinson formed the jury for this year's award. The chairperson of English PEN, Ruth Borthwick, praised Roy for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.”
“While India remains an important focus, she is truly an internationalist thinker, and her powerful voice is not to be silenced,” Borthwick said.
Actor Khalid Abdalla expressed: “Her books, her writings, the spirit with which her life is lived, have been a lodestar through the many crises and the darkness our world has faced since her first book, ‘The God of Small Things.’”
Arundhati Roy will receive the PEN Pinter Prize on 10 October while the ceremony will be co-hosted by the British Library.
Literary figures who have won the award previously are: Michael Rosen, Malorie Blackman, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard and Carol Ann Duffy.
This is what the author had to say after winning the British literary award: “I wish Harold Pinter were with us today to write about the almost incomprehensible turn the world is taking. Since he isn't, some of us must do our utmost to try to fill his shoes.”
Arundhati Roy whose name is synonymous with political activism, human rights and environmental issues was born in Shillong, Meghalaya. She hails from a mixed cultural family background; her father is a Bengali and her mother is a Malayali. She’s married to film maker Pradip Krishen who offered her a role as a goatherd in the award winning film Massey Sahib.
Roy's non-fiction literary works are numerous, but her Booker Prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things, is the one that brought her immense global recognition.