Why Arundhati Roy Fled Literary Fame
In the spring of 1997, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel, The God of Small Things, became an international sensation, marking a watershed moment in a new wave of Indian writing in English. That June, The New Yorker immortalized the boom in a group portrait celebrating the 50th anniversary of India’s independence: Salman Rushdie (still in hiding, at the time) stood at the center, flanked by Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, and Rohinton Mistry, among others.