The God of Small Things: A Study in Memory
Abstract
It is difficult to catagaorise The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. The story of the book is
neither a comedy, nor a tragedy, nor history, nor romance. There is turmoil and passion and humour and
pain. In spite of all this it is a story about ordinary people leading ordinary lives. But as one lays the book
down the spirit that comes shining through masks the ordinariness and “somehow marries the deepest,
smallest personal emotions with an epic narrative” i Arundhati Roy herself points out: “Little events,
ordinary things smashed and reconstituted, Imbued with a new meaning. Suddenly they become the
bleached bones of story” (Roy 32)ii
Downloads
References
ii Meera Syal as quoted in the jacket of The God of Small Things, London: Flamingo,1997
ii Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, London: Flamingo,1997 p.32
iii Jayanth Kodkani, “Arundhati Roy:The God of Big Profits” Sunday Times of India, New Delhi, 26 October
,p.17
iv Sheila Mathrani, “Interview with Arundhati Roy,” Sunday Times of India, New Delhi, 26 October 1997,
p.15
v
Johan Updike, Mother Tongues: Subduing the Language of the Colonizer” The New Yorker, 23 and 30
June 1997, p.158
vi George Ipe, An Exclusive Interview: The Novelist Arundhati Roy’s Mother” (Rediff on the Net)
vii Updike, Mother Tongues: Subduing the Language of the Colonizer” p.156
viii Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, London:Flamingo,1997 p.2
