The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things is a novel by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, published in 1997, set in Kerala in southern India and moving between 1969 and the early 1990s to tell the story of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha, whose family is shattered by the drowning death of their visiting young cousin Sophie Mol and by the discovery of their mother Ammu's forbidden relationship with Velutha, a Dalit carpenter working for the family, in a society governed by rigid caste and class boundaries the novel calls the Love Laws. Told in a nonlinear structure that circles repeatedly around the pivotal events of that year, revealing their consequences before their causes, the novel combines a densely poetic prose style with sustained social critique of caste oppression, gender, and the legacy of colonialism in postcolonial Kerala. Roy's debut novel, written over several years while she worked as a screenwriter, won the Booker Prize in 1997 and became an international bestseller. The God of Small Things is widely regarded as a landmark of contemporary Indian fiction in English for its formal ambition and its unflinching treatment of caste violence.