WordsWorth Interview with Arundhati Roy.
Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things (Random House, 1997) is living the dream of most first time novelists. When she finished the book, which took almost five years to write, she hoped to get it published by a small publisher in her native land of India. Fate thought differently. When she brought the manuscript to an Indian editor he immediately loved the book and saw a marketing potential far larger than Ms. Roy had hoped. He contacted an agent in England. Within three days that agent was on Ms. Roy's doorstep asking to represent her. Rights to the book were sold in 18 countries prior to publication - now, 2 months after publication that number has increased to 21 countries. The God of Small Things is a book that in all accuracy, can be said to have taken the publishing world by storm. And Ms. Roy, ending a lengthy multi-country tour sounded as if she were feeling a bit battered by the storm when we spoke.
An Excerpt from The God. | A review by Emily Gutheinz .
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Credit Pradip Kishen .
When I asked if she were finishing her tour she responded "Yes, just another three more days or four more days. But it feels like another month. First I was all over India, then I was in Norway, Denmark, Holland, and New York.after Toronto I will going back to India." With a deep sigh she added "I still haven't done anything (in so many other countries). There are 21 countries." Then after a pause she added with a laugh. "and only one writer." Ms. Roy was surprised that one of those countries is the United States. "When I finished this book I didn't even remotely think it would be published in America. I mean, outside of America the common feeling is that America is a very insular market. That it has a small group of intellectuals, literary people, but very small, and the rest of the country's basically not interested in anything else that goes on in the world.So I was completely astounded to how open it has been to this book; I didn't expect it.
