"A banquet for all the senses," said "Newsweek" of this bestselling and Booker Prize-winning literary novel--a richly textured first book about the tragic decline of one family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

With sensuous prose, a dreamlike style infused with breathtakingly beautiful images and keen insight into human nature, Roy's debut novel charts fresh territory in the genre of magical, prismatic literature. Set in Kerala, India, during the late 1960s when Communism rattled the age-old caste system, the story begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel's protagonists, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In a circuitous and suspenseful narrative, Roy reveals the family tensions that led to the twins' behavior on the fateful night that Sophie drowned. Beneath the drama of a family tragedy lies a background of local politics, social taboos and the tide of history‘all of which come together in a slip of fate, after which a family is irreparably shattered. Roy captures the children's candid observations but clouded understanding of adults' complex emotional lives. Rahel notices that "at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside." Plangent with a sad wisdom, the children's view is never oversimplified, and the adult characters reveal their frailties‘and in one case, a repulsively evil power‘in subtle and complex ways. While Roy's powers of description are formidable, she sometimes succumbs to overwriting, forcing every minute detail to symbolize something bigger, and the pace of the story slows. But these lapses are few, and her powers coalesce magnificently in the book's second half. Roy's clarity of vision is remarkable, her voice original, her story beautifully constructed and masterfully told. First serial to Granta; foreign rights sold in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Holland, India, Greece, Canada and the U.K. (May) From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Roy's remarkable first novel opens during a "hot, brooding" May in India, with fruit ripening and the sunshine glittering sharply. The novel that unfolds is not, however, some lyrical paean to the dreamy, steamy East but rather a piercing study of childhood innocence lost, told in a voice that is witty, irreverent, at times even caustic. Twin sister and brother Rahel and Estha, born with a "single Siamese soul" though they don't look a bit alike, are at the center of a family in crisis, a family where "uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals." At the funeral for little Sophie Mol that fills the book's first pages, the twins and their mother must stand apart. Why they are forced to do so‘and how their implication in Sophie Mol's death drives them to rebellion and something beyond despair‘"personal despair could never be desperate enough"‘is the import of this moving and compactly written book. Highly recommended.‘Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize, this much-feted novel does not quite live up to its advance publicity but marks an auspicious literary debut nevertheless. Set in south India, the narrative circles around a traumatic event in the life of a particular family in the late 1960s and traces the playing out of the consequences of this event in the years following. Perspective centers on two children--twins (boy and girl) whose codependent universe is torn apart by the developments in question. Reminiscent in some ways of the work of Jamaica Kincaid and in others (almost inevitably) of that of Salman Rushdie, the novel's mannered construction threatens on occasion to overwhelm it, but it is, in the end, redeemed by its compassion, insight, and commitment to its own conception. A flawed novel, perhaps, but a capacious one that possesses at least the courage of its own very creditable convictions. Recommended for all readers. N. F. Lazarus Brown University From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Suzanna Arundhati Roy, 1961 - Suzanna Roy was born November 24, 1961. Her parents divorced and she lived with her mother Mary Roy, a social activist, in Aymanam. Her mother ran an informal school named Corpus Christi and it was there Roy developed her intellectual abilities, free from the rules of formal education. At the age of 16, she left home and lived on her own in a squatter's colony in Delhi. She went six years without seeing her mother.

She attended Delhi School of Architecture where she met and married fellow student Gerard Da Cunha. Neither had a great interest in architecture so they quit school and went to Goa. They stayed there for seven months and returned broke. Their marriage lasted only four years. Roy had taken a job at the National Institute of Urban Affairs and, while cycling down a road; film director Pradeep Krishen offered her a small role as a tribal bimbo in Massey Saab. She then received a scholarship to study the restoration of monuments in Italy. During her eight months in Italy, she realized she was a writer. Now married to Krishen, they planned a 26-episode television epic called Banyan Tree. They didn't shoot enough footage for more than four episodes so the serial was scrapped. She wrote the screenplay for the film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and Electric Moon.

Her next piece caused controversy. It was an article that criticized Shekar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, which was about Phoolan Devi. She accused Kapur of misrepresenting Devi and it eventually became a court case. Afterwards, finished with film, she concentrated on her writing, which became the novel "A God of Small Things." It is based on what it was like growing up in Kerala. The novel contains mild eroticism and again, controversy found Roy having a public interest petition filed to remove the last chapter because of the description of a sexual act. It took Roy five years to write "A God of Small Things" and was released April 4, 1997 in Delhi. It received the Booker prize in London in 1997 and has topped the best-seller lists around the world. Roy is the first non-expatriate Indian author and the first Indian woman to win the Booker prize.

(Bowker Author Biography) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.