The Booker Prize–winning novelist and outspoken activist work blends lyrical storytelling with fearless political critique.
1. She called her mother 'Mrs Roy' just like the other children at the school in Kottayam owned by her mother Mary Roy.
2. Her mother left the north east with her two children when the China war broke out in 1962 and border districts were being evacuated.
3. They came to Ooty and occupied a cottage belonging to her estranged deceased maternal grandfather who was an entomologist.
4. Arundhati Roy met her father for the first time as an adult at 25.
5. Her mother taught at a school in Ooty. They left Ooty because the cold weather worsened Mary Roy's asthma.
6. They moved to Ayemenem, Kerala. The town where Arundhati's Booker Prize winning novel The God of Small Things is set.
7. She left her home in Kerala at 18, lived hand to mouth and trained as an architect in Delhi.
8. She has acted in three films (Massey Sahib, In Which Annie Gives It To Those Ones and Electric Moon).
9. She won the National Award for best screenplay for In Which Annie Gives It To Those Ones. She returned the award in 2015 protesting against intolerance.
10. She spent a day in Tihar jail for contempt of court over her opposition to the Narmada Dam project in 2002.