The God of Small Things: A Novel (The Perennial Collection)

by Arundhati Roy

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An affluent Indian family is forever changed by one fateful day in 1969, from the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“[The God of Small Things] offers such magic, mystery, and sadness that, literally, this reader turned the last page and decided to reread it. Immediately. It’s that haunting.”—USA Today

Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s modern classic is equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest.
 
Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.

• ISBN10: 0812979656
• ISBN13: 9780812979657
• Publish Date: 16 December 2008 (first published 22 April 1997)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Random House Inc
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780812979657

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

If the question ever comes up of how I got started to writing (seriously, earnestly, more than two sentences together) again, the finger-point will be to this book. Take, for example, this incidental little paragraph that is a short story all in itself:

"Esthappen steadied the little boat on the uneven earth floor with a few blocks of wood that he found in Velutha's workstation in the backyard. He gave Rahel a cooking ladle made of a wooden handle stuck through the polished half of a coconut shell.

The twins climbed into the vallom and rowed across vast, choppy waters. With a Thaiy thaiy thaka thaiy thaiy thome. And a jeweled Jesus watching.

He walked on water. Perhaps. But could He have swum on land?

In matching knickers and dark glasses? With His Fountain in a Love-In-Tokyo? In pointy shoes and a puff? Would He have had the imagination?"

See? Magical. I'm pretty sure I've never read a childhood (terror, exuberance, frightening lucidity) so perfectly captured as with The God of Small Things, dear Estha and Rahel, Ammu's beloved two-egg twins.