It has sent her in directions she probably never expected to travel, for reasons she is still trying to make clear.

As Roy herself has written, her story has 'a sort of cloying Reader’s Digest ring to it––an unknown writer spent secret years writing her first novel, which was subsequently published in 40 languages, sold several million copies, and went on to win the Booker Prize.' Or so it begins. The tremendous success of The God of Small Things, a lyrical and tragic tale of the interlocking generations of an Indian family, loosely based on Roy’s own childhood, turned this previously unknown architect and former screenwriter into a global celebrity. Roy, then 36, left behind her quiet life in Delhi for a yearlong world tour and was feted everywhere she went. Indian politicians were especially eager to be associated with this 'Pride of India,' the winner of England’s highest literary award.

Most famous writers are content to play the part, going to book signings and ceremonies, appearing on TV, doing the literary thing. But this is where Roy’s story diverges from the rest. After her year away, she returned to a country that had changed forever. What had happened in her absence changed Roy, too, and changed the way people saw her.

In May 1998, the Indian government conducted its first official nuclear tests in the Thar desert, a region close to the country’s tense northwest border with Pakistan. In July 1998, Roy expressed her outrage in 'The End of Imagination,' an essay published in two national magazines. The essay was a blast of wit, fact, and fury aimed at India’s government for spending its money and energy on bombs while its people starved and its land decayed. 'The air is thick with ugliness,' she wrote, 'and there’s the unmistakable smell of fascism on the breeze. . . . India’s nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people.'

Roy had done what few celebrity writers dare to do: She had taken an outspoken political stand. She had also made powerful enemies. The same politicians who had praised Roy only months before now condemned her for betraying her homeland.
Now she sits—small, slight, and quiet—cross-legged on the floor of her New Delhi flat and dares anyone to tell her how a novelist should behave.
'People ask me all the time, am I a writer or an activist,' she says, 'but it’s such a sad comment on our times that you can even be asked that question. Because I thought that’s what writers do, you know––they write about the society they live in. And I want to say, ‘Do you think it’s my job just to be some cheap entertainer? Why should you even ask me that question?’'