The memoir by the Booker Prize-winning author will be an intimate portrait of her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, who died in 2022
Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy’s new book, Mother Mary Comes To Me, published by Penguin Random House, is set to hit shelves in September 2025. This will be Roy’s first memoir, marking a departure from her well-known novels and political essays, as it’s a personal and intimate portrait of her life and her relationship with her late mother, Mary Roy.
The book is Roy’s response to the death of her mother in September 2022. In the aftermath of this loss, Roy found herself grappling with complex emotions, which led her to explore her own identity, shaped by the maternal bond she describes as both a shelter and a storm. Reflecting on the loss, Roy admits to being “heart-smashed” and “more than a little ashamed” of the intensity of her grief.
‘I have been writing this book all my life’
This prompted her to write the memoir as a way to understand her feelings. The book will provide an insight into Roy’s childhood, from her early years in Kerala to her life in Delhi, and the difficult journey of navigating the profound yet thorny love between mother and daughter.
Roy, known for her politically charged writing and activism, describes her relationship with her mother as a crucial factor in her evolution as both a person and a writer. In a statement on the upcoming book, she says: “I have been writing this book all my life. Perhaps a mother like mine deserved a writer like me as a daughter. Equally, perhaps a writer like me deserved a mother like her. Even more than a daughter mourning the passing of her mother, I mourn her as a writer who has lost her most enthralling subject.”
Mother Mary Comes To Me will provide readers with the same level of depth and reflection seen in Roy’s previous works, such as her novels The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, but with a more personal narrative focus. The memoir promises to blend the scale and complexity of her fiction with the passion and political clarity of her essays, offering a unique exploration of freedom, love, and grief. It’s a tribute to both personal liberation and the abiding nature of familial bonds.
‘A visceral account of personal, political awakening’
Manasi Subramaniam, Editor-in-Chief of Penguin Press, said in a release: “That Arundhati Roy has chosen this generous, courageous memoir as her means to unravel her relationship with her formidable mother is our privilege entirely — for, in doing so, she allows her reader to bear witness to a remarkable journey. Filled with heart and nerve, humour and pathos, and the very raw edges of love, Mother Mary Comes to Me is a visceral and unflinching account of personal and political awakening.”
The memoir is expected to carry a political undercurrent reflective of Roy’s own activist inclinations. Her mother was a noted educator and women’s rights activist who won a landmark Supreme Court case in India that ensured equal property rights for Syrian Christian women. The memoir will have a global release across several territories, including the UK (Hamish Hamilton), the US and Canada (Scribner), Germany (Fischer), France (Gallimard), Italy (Guanda), Spain (Alfaguara/PRH), and the Netherlands (Park Uitgevers), among others.
Roy is known for her lyrical prose, deep political insight, and rich emotional resonance. Her exploration — a daughter’s journey toward understanding herself and her mother, which will also shine light on the complex and often painful nature of love, loss, and identity — is something Roy’s fans and literary enthusiasts will be eager to experience.
