But while she enjoyed being feted for GOST and still lives off the royalties, she was uncomfortable with the ways that India was shifting politically. Twenty years ago, in the wake of her best-selling debut, many assumed that Roy would get right back to fiction. Roy seems to appreciate her aerie and be aware of the need to leave it. On either side of the apartment is a terrace full of potted plants, an oasis. She seems to have taken the same sly delight in peppering the new novel with a spectacular array of obscenities-“I swear by your mother’s cock” is one-that punctuates her flowing prose with adrenaline jolts. “Everyone is fucked over in the story, so it’s OK if the book gets fucked up,” says Roy, who curses frequently, the words in striking contrast to her musical voice. Spreading them out on the table, they decide on matte rather than glossy for the off-white cover, inspired by a Muslim marble grave. She shows you what’s really going on.”Īt 1:00, Roy’s neighbor, the literary editor in chief of Penguin India, Meru Gokhale, knocks on the door with homemade ravioli and tomato soup for lunch, and cover proofs. As Díaz says, “If you really want to know the world beyond our corporate-sponsored dreamscapes, you read writers like Roy. Her skin was blue-black, sleek as a baby seal’s.” To read the book is to hear Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, and all kinds of English, and to be flooded with impressions of India right now. She lay in a pool of light, under a column of swarming neon-lit mosquitoes, naked. In one poetic passage a baby is found “on the concrete pavement, in a crib of litter: silver cigarette foil, a few plastic bags and empty packets of Uncle Chipps. With her exquisite and dynamic storytelling, Roy balances scenes of suffering and corruption with flashes of humor, giddiness, and even transcendence.
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