Shelter and Storm: Arundhati Roy on Writing Her Mother

An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review . Read it here: Recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, Adam Biles sits down with Arundhati Roy to discuss her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me . Roy reflects on writing a “novelist’s memoir,” where memory and imagination blur, and explores her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy. The conversation moves from Roy’s unconventional childhood in Kerala to her formative years in architecture, activism, and the aftermath of The God of Small Things . She discusses resisting literary celebrity, embracing political responsibility, and finding strength in chosen families and friendship networks. With candour and wit, Roy rejects reductive “therapy narratives,” instead offering a portrait of identity shaped by contradiction, resilience, and love. Buy Mother Mary Comes to Me: 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 The Architecture of Modern Empire . Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, Paris Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen to Shelter and Storm: Arundhati Roy on Writing Her Mother online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Shelter and Storm: Arundhati Roy on Writing Her Mother is an episode from Shakespeare and Company by Shakespeare and Company.

This episode is 49:26 long.

This episode was published on Apr 29, 2026.

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