'Mother Mary Comes to Me': Arundhati Roy's memoir to release on September 2

New Delhi | Booker prize-winning writer Arundhati Roy's memoir "Mother Mary Comes to Me" will hit the stands on September 2, publisher Penguin Random House India (PRHI) announced on Monday.

The book, currently available for pre-orders online, unravels Roy's deeply personal experiences of becoming the person and writer she is, "shaped most profoundly by her complex bond with her extraordinary, singular mother, women's rights activist Mary Roy, whom she ran from at age 18".

As Roy grappled with the intensity of her grief after her mother's passing in September 2022, she turned to writing. The result is this memoir, offering readers an emotional journey filled with "moments of anger, joy, heartbreak, longing, tenderness, and deep introspection".

"... Seeing her (Roy's mother) through lenses that were not entirely coloured by my own experience of her made me value her for the woman she was. It made me a writer. A novelist. Because that's what novelists are -- labyrinths. And now this labyrinth must make sense of its labyrinthine self without her," Roy said in a statement.

The 63-year-old author is known for her award-winning novels like “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” and the political clarity of her essays compiled in “The End of Imagination”, “The Doctor and The Saint”, and “The Algebra of Infinite Justice”.

According to the publisher, the book is an ode to freedom, a tribute to "thorny love and savage grace" — a memoir like no other.

"'Mother Mary comes to you', too: preorders for Arundhati Roy's memoir open today -- and with them, a door into a story long carried, long buried, a story that is unique and yet universal. At the centre of this fierce, intimate act of remembering are two women, a schoolteacher and a writer, who happen to be mother and daughter. The time has come for readers to now claim their place in this journey," said Manasi Subramaniam, editor-in-chief and vice- president at PRHI.

The book is priced at Rs 899.