Set in the village of Ayemenem in Kerala, the novel moves between 1969, when the fraternal twins Estha and Rahel are seven, and 1993, when they meet again as damaged adults. Their mother Ammu, divorced and quietly defiant, lives on sufferance in her family's house alongside a pickle factory, a bitter grand-aunt and an Oxford-educated uncle who calls himself a Marxist.
The arrival of the twins' half-English cousin Sophie Mol and Ammu's attachment to Velutha, a gifted carpenter from a Dalit family, bring the household's rules about who may love whom into sharp conflict. Roy reveals the shape of the disaster early and then circles back, so the suspense lies less in what happens than in how ordinary prejudice, politics and fear make it unavoidable.
The prose is the book's signature: invented compound words, capitalised phrases borrowed from a child's way of seeing, and a looping chronology. It won the Booker Prize in 1997 and remains a defining Indian novel in English for the way it ties intimate grief to caste, gender and the small cruelties of respectable families.
Book details
| Author | Arundhati Roy |
|---|---|
| First published | 1997 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 340 |
| Setting | Ayemenem, Kerala, 1969 and 1993 |
| Awards | Booker Prize 1997 |
Themes
- Caste
- Forbidden love
- Childhood trauma
- Family
Who should read it
Readers who enjoy lyrical, non-linear fiction and are ready for a story whose tenderness and heartbreak arrive together.