The God of Small Things (First U.S. Edition)

Arundhati Roy

ISBN 10: 0679457313 / ISBN 13: 9780679457312

Published by Random House, New York, 1997

About this Item

First printing of the first U.S. edition (with number line to 2, as was customary for Random House first printings at time of publication, with FIRST EDITION stated). A fine copy in a price-clipped, otherwise fine jacket. (Not a book club edition.) Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. "The God of Small Things" tells the story of fraternal twins Estha and Rahel, whose lives are shattered by a forbidden love affair and the rigid caste and social rules of southern India in the 1960s. Roy, an Indian writer and activist, won the Booker Prize for this debut novel, which became an international bestseller and literary landmark. This is her first novel. Roy s second novel, "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness", was published twenty years later in 2017.

Seller Inventory # Rear-Stacks-Roy

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The God of Small Things (First U.S. Edition)
• Publisher: Random House, New York
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679457313
• ISBN 13: 9780679457312
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Booker Prize

About this title

Synopsis

"They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. "

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . .

Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family--their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen."  With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes--Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.

About the Author

Arundhati Roy was trained as an architect. She has worked as a production designer and written the screenplays for two films. She lives in New Delhi. This is her first book.