About this episode

Arundhati Roy discusses her memoir and complex relationship with her mother in a conversation with Adam Biles.

An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review . Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-arundhati-roy Recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, Adam Biles sits down with Arundhati Roy to discuss her memoir  Mother Mary Comes to Me . Roy reflects on writing a “novelist’s memoir,” where memory and imagination blur, and explores her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy. The conversation moves from Roy’s unconventional childhood in Kerala to her formative years in architecture, activism, and the aftermath of  The God of Small Things . She discusses resisting literary celebrity, embracing political responsibility, and finding strength in chosen families and friendship networks. With candour and wit, Roy rejects reductive “therapy narratives,” instead offering a portrait of identity shaped by contradiction, resilience, and love. Buy Mother Mary Comes to Me: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/mother-mary-comes-to-me Arundhati Roy is the author of the novels The God of Small Things , which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and…

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