Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Arundhati Roy is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017. She is the author of various works of non-fiction including My Seditious Heart, Azadi and, most recently, The Architecture of Modern Empire.
Brave and absorbing . . . In this remarkable memoir, the Booker-winning novelist looks back on her bittersweet relationship with her mercurial mother . . . The world described in the first part of the book provides much of the material for <i>The God of Small Things</i>. But these pages aren’t significant for giving us access to Roy’s inspiration, or as a preamble to her life as a bestselling writer who would go on to become an oppositional political voice. Even if she were none of these things or had never written her novel, they would be utterly absorbing. They have a wonderful, self-assured self-sufficiency
Guardian
Beautifully written . . . It is a total pleasure to spend time with Arundhati Roy’s mind and memory in this funny, wise, candid and perceptive memoir
Independent, 'Book of the Month' (5 stars)
The book has the lyricism of Gabriel García Márquez, the political sweep of Barbara Kingsolver, and the antic family humour of David Sedaris
Financial Times
Truthful, moving, absorbing . . . [Roy] achieves the one thing that any writer’s memoir ought to do: trace the formation of their voice . . . The best piece of non-fiction she has ever written
Telegraph
Unusually, my book of the year is not a novel – it is Arundhati Roy’s outstanding memoir <i>Mother Mary Comes to Me</i>. Roy’s life story is truly remarkable. Her account of it – rooted in her troubled relationship with her mother – affords a real appreciation of the person she became. She shows there is no fixed boundary between fiction and nonfiction in the hands of a skilled writer. Roy rails against injustice and stands up for the values intrinsic to her worldview
- Nicola Sturgeon, Observer, 'The best books of 2025'
Remarkable, fascinating . . . [<i>Mother Mary Comes to Me</i>] shows us, with a gentle and hard-won wisdom, that we do not forget our mothers, or our motherlands, even when we are miles, continents or “worlds” away from them. We carry them with us wherever we go
- Elif Shafak, Observer
Arundhati Roy writes in characteristically dazzling prose . . . This memoir teems with irreverent humour and acerbic, often brilliant insights
Irish Independent
Sharp, irreverent, wickedly funny . . . unsettling, bruising, often brutal, yet ultimately life-affirming
BBC News
Arundhati Roy, India’s finest writer by far, revealed much, with characteristic candour and wit, in her long-awaited memoir <i>Mother Mary Comes to Me</i>
The Spectator, 'Book of the Year'
Feels like the best kind of fiction
The Economist
The incredible first memoir from the Booker-winning radical icon Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
AUDIBLE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
BLACKWELL'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
WINNER OF THE GOOGLE PLAY BEST OF 2025 AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2026
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMENS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 2026
Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother Mary, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
Distraught and even a “little ashamed” at the intensity of her response to the death of the mother she ran from at age eighteen, Arundhati began to write Mother Mary Comes to Me. The result is this astonishing, disconcerting, surprisingly funny chronicle—unique and simultaneously universal, of the author’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.
With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.
2025 BOOK OF THE YEAR ACCORDING TO NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, TIME, INDEPENDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, OBSERVER
Brave and absorbing . . . In this remarkable memoir, the Booker-winning novelist looks back on her bittersweet relationship with her mercurial mother . . . The world described in the first part of the book provides much of the material for <i>The God of Small Things</i>. But these pages aren’t significant for giving us access to Roy’s inspiration, or as a preamble to her life as a bestselling writer who would go on to become an oppositional political voice. Even if she were none of these things or had never written her novel, they would be utterly absorbing. They have a wonderful, self-assured self-sufficiency
Guardian
Beautifully written . . . It is a total pleasure to spend time with Arundhati Roy’s mind and memory in this funny, wise, candid and perceptive memoir
Independent, 'Book of the Month' (5 stars)
The book has the lyricism of Gabriel García Márquez, the political sweep of Barbara Kingsolver, and the antic family humour of David Sedaris
Financial Times
Truthful, moving, absorbing . . . [Roy] achieves the one thing that any writer’s memoir ought to do: trace the formation of their voice . . . The best piece of non-fiction she has ever written
Telegraph
Unusually, my book of the year is not a novel – it is Arundhati Roy’s outstanding memoir <i>Mother Mary Comes to Me</i>. Roy’s life story is truly remarkable. Her account of it – rooted in her troubled relationship with her mother – affords a real appreciation of the person she became. She shows there is no fixed boundary between fiction and nonfiction in the hands of a skilled writer. Roy rails against injustice and stands up for the values intrinsic to her worldview
- Nicola Sturgeon, Observer, 'The best books of 2025'
Remarkable, fascinating . . . [<i>Mother Mary Comes to Me</i>] shows us, with a gentle and hard-won wisdom, that we do not forget our mothers, or our motherlands, even when we are miles, continents or “worlds” away from them. We carry them with us wherever we go
- Elif Shafak, Observer
Arundhati Roy writes in characteristically dazzling prose . . . This memoir teems with irreverent humour and acerbic, often brilliant insights
Irish Independent
Sharp, irreverent, wickedly funny . . . unsettling, bruising, often brutal, yet ultimately life-affirming
BBC News
Arundhati Roy, India’s finest writer by far, revealed much, with characteristic candour and wit, in her long-awaited memoir <i>Mother Mary Comes to Me</i>
The Spectator, 'Book of the Year'
Feels like the best kind of fiction
The Economist
The incredible first memoir from the Booker-winning radical icon Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
AUDIBLE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
BLACKWELL'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
WINNER OF THE GOOGLE PLAY BEST OF 2025 AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2026
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMENS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 2026
Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother Mary, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
Distraught and even a “little ashamed” at the intensity of her response to the death of the mother she ran from at age eighteen, Arundhati began to write Mother Mary Comes to Me. The result is this astonishing, disconcerting, surprisingly funny chronicle—unique and simultaneously universal, of the author’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.
With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.
2025 BOOK OF THE YEAR ACCORDING TO NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, TIME, INDEPENDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, OBSERVER