Mother Mary Comes To Me

Brave and absorbing … In this remarkable memoir, the Booker-winning novelist looks back on her bittersweet relationship with her mercurial mother … The world described in the first part of the book provides much of the material for The God of Small Things. But these pages aren’t significant for giving us access to Roy’s inspiration, or as a preamble to her life as a bestselling writer who would go on to become an oppositional political voice. Even if she were none of these things or had never written her novel, they would be utterly absorbing. They have a wonderful, self-assured self-sufficiency * Guardian *Beautifully written … It is a total pleasure to spend time with Arundhati Roy’s mind and memory in this funny, wise, candid and perceptive memoir * Independent, ‘Book of the Month’ (5 stars) *The book has the lyricism of Gabriel García Márquez, the political sweep of Barbara Kingsolver, and the antic family humour of David Sedaris * Financial Times *Truthful, moving, absorbing … [Roy] achieves the one thing that any writer’s memoir ought to do: trace the formation of their voice … The best piece of non-fiction she has ever written * The Telegraph *Feels like the best kind of fiction * The Economist *Arundhati Roy writes in characteristically dazzling prose … This memoir teems with irreverent humour and acerbic, often brilliant insights * Irish Independent *Sharp, irreverent, wickedly funny … unsettling, bruising, often brutal, yet ultimately life-affirming * BBC News *Remarkable, fascinating … [Mother Mary Comes to Me] shows us, with a gentle and hard-won wisdom, that we do not forget our mothers, or our motherlands, even when we are miles, continents or “worlds” away from them. We carry them with us wherever we go – Elif Shafak * Observer *”[Roy] channels warmth, moral clarity and a sweeping bird’s-eye view of modern India to tell her life story, which was shaped by poverty, violence, political upheaval and—most of all—the volatile single mother who raised her * New York Times *Tender … full of precise imagery and blistering emotional intelligence * Washington Post *

Arundhati Roy is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017. She is the author of various works of non-fiction including My Seditious Heart, Azadi and, most recently, The Architecture of Modern Empire.