Mother Mary Comes to Me is Arundhati Roy’s first memoir. The Booker Prize winning author of The God of Small Things delivers an intimate and unflinching portrait of the woman who shaped her life: her mother, Mary Roy.

Part tribute, part reckoning, Mother Mary Comes to Me traces Roy’s journey from a turbulent childhood in Kerala to her years as an outspoken writer and activist on the global stage. At its heart is the formidable figure of Mary Roy—a single mother, educator, and pioneering women’s rights activist whose fierce will and uncompromising spirit were both a source of deep love and painful complexity.

Written in the wake of her mother’s death, this lyrical and emotionally charged memoir explores the fragile threads that bind family, freedom, and memory. With her signature poetic intensity and political clarity, Roy reflects on leaving home at eighteen “not in rebellion, but in order to continue to love her,” navigating the lifelong tension between connection and independence.

Astonishing, often disturbing, and surprisingly funny, Mother Mary Comes to Me is a powerful meditation on grief, identity, and legacy. It is Arundhati Roy’s most personal and revealing work to date—a story of maternal influence, emotional survival, and the making of one of the most fearless voices of our time.