Indian author Arundhati Roy has won the PEN Pinter Prize as she was hailed as being a “luminous voice of freedom and justice” for decades. The writer, 62, who won the Booker Prize for her debut novel The God Of Small Things in 1997, will be honoured at a ceremony, co-hosted by the British Library, later this year. It comes amid reports she will be prosecuted in India for comments she made about the disputed region of Kashmir.
Roy said she was “delighted” to win the award, and added she wishes the late playwright Harold Pinter, who the prize is named after, was “with us today to write about the almost incomprehensible turn the world is taking”. She added: “Since he isn’t, some of us must do our utmost to try to fill his shoes.” Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize in 1997 with her debut novel The God Of Small Things (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Abdalla said: “Arundhati Roy is a luminous voice of freedom and justice whose words have come with fierce clarity and determination for almost 30 years now.
“Her books, her writings, the spirit with which her life is lived, have been a lodestar through the many crises and the darkness our world has faced since her first book, The God Of Small Things. “This year, as the world faces the deep histories that have created this moment in Gaza, our need for writers who are ‘unflinching and unswerving’ has been immense. “In honouring Arundhati Roy this year, we are celebrating both the dignity of her body of work and the tim.
