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The God of Small Things (1997)

by Arundhati Roy

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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19,537371236 (3.87)691
In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment.
Asia (34)
AP Lit (185)
1990s (175)
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» See also 691 mentions

English (331)  Spanish (9)  Italian (6)  German (6)  French (5)  Dutch (5)  Catalan (2)  Swedish (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Hebrew (1)  Finnish (1)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  All languages (369)
Showing 1-5 of 331 (next | show all)
Beautiful and weird. Extraordinary maximalist inventive language. ( )
  localgayangel | Mar 5, 2024 |
Another genius (like Rushdie) from the Indian subcontinent. Don't overlook her story. ( )
  ben_r47 | Feb 22, 2024 |
The God of small things
By Arundhati Roy

This novel about Rahel and her twin brother Estha, mainly set in 1969 during their childhood in Kerala, India is a memorable read. The death of their cousin is known from the beginning, but the author still kept me interested by unraveling the full story layer by layer. Mostly told from the perspective of 7 year old Rahel, the novel started out sweet and sometimes funny, grew sadder and darker over the course of the book. The writing is overly descriptive and took me a while to get into, but it makes sense at the end, when I realized it's what this novel is about after all, the small things and how everything can change in a day.

I would definitely recommend this book, a heartbreaking read though, be aware of the trigger warnings. ( )
  die-buecherdiebin | Feb 9, 2024 |
This novel is masterful. Roy's prose is poetry, or near as. With coinages, imagery, and heartbreaking emotion, she transports you to rural Kerala and places you among the cast of the novel across the generations they span. I've just put the book down, and am attempting to extinguish the lingering feeling of oppressive, impending doom that has sat with me throughout the book. More incredibly to me, I enjoyed it, as someone who tends to avoid doom and its impending arrival at as many opportunities as possible. Roy boldly tells you what is going to happen in the very first pages, and unfolds the path to get there beautifully, keeping you entranced not by suspense but with the weight of inevitability. I didn't think it would work until I read it.

Inevitability is not just the feeling of the book, it's also a theme. There is history, and there is History. We might take the former as a set of facts, and the latter as facts personified, empowered to affect the ways in which we live. The titular God of Small Things is a the personal tragedies that fall victim to History, when the things we want and need are unreachable because of History's designs and strictures. How free are we, when we live amidst ideology, tradition, family, society? Are we free to live, to love? I won't say this novel gives me hope that we are. I don't even think it makes it clear that we will be; this is a tragedy and History can be ruthless with those that rebel against it. What it does do, is remind me that we should be, because the cost of living constrained thus is far too high a price to pay. ( )
  Zedseayou | Jan 30, 2024 |
I read this book years ago and all I remember is the incest. ( )
  LibrarianDest | Jan 3, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 331 (next | show all)
If Ms. Roy is sometimes overzealous in foreshadowing her characters' fate, resorting on occasion to darkly portentous clues, she proves remarkably adept at infusing her story with the inexorable momentum of tragedy. She writes near the beginning of the novel that in India, personal despair ''could never be desperate enough,'' that ''it was never important enough'' because ''worse things had happened'' and ''kept happening.'' Yet as rendered in this remarkable novel, the ''relative smallness'' of her characters' misfortunes remains both heartbreaking and indelible.
 

» Add other authors (19 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Arundhati Royprimary authorall editionscalculated
Demanuelli, ClaudeTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fruitós, AdriàDiseño gráficosecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Grube, AnetteÜbersetzersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Jonkheer, ChristienTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lundborg, GunillaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Veres Xesto, AntíaTraductorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one.

John Berger
Dedication
For Mary Roy, who grew me up. Who taught me to say "excuse me" before interrupting her in Public. Who loved me enough to let me go.

For LKC, who, like me, survived.
First words
May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month.
Maj je v Ajemenemu vroč, morast mesec.
Quotations
"D'you know what happens when you hurt people? When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
"Just ignore her," Ammu said. "She's just trying to attract attention."

Ammu too was wrong. Rahel was trying to not attract the attention that she deserved.
Rahel looked around her and saw that she was in a Play. But she had only a small part.
She was just the landscape. A flower perhaps. Or a tree.
A face in the crowd. A Townspeople.
Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-coloured puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-coloured minds.
Rahel drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge. With a Sitting Down sense.
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Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Problème de CK
1997 (1e édition originale)
1998-04-23 (1e traduction et édition française, Du monde entier, Gallimard)
2000-01-20 (Réédition française, Folio, Gallimard)
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In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment.

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