The God of Small Things: A Novel
Arundhati Roy
Language: English
Pages: 333
ISBN: 0812979656
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.
Two: It smells though. Sicklysweet. Like old roses on a breeze. (Dum dum) “Madiyo? ” one of History’s Agents asked. “Madi aayirikkum, ”another replied. Enough? Enough. They stepped away from him. Craftsmen assessing their work. Seeking aesthetic distance. Their Work, abandoned by God and History; by Marx, by Man, by Woman, and–in the hours to come–by Children, lay folded on the floor. He was semi-conscious, but wasn’t moving. His skull was fractured in three places. His nose and both his
Darkgreen Lightgreen. To Stop Train Pull Chain , it said in green. Ot pots niart llup niahc , Estha thought in green. Through the window bars, Ammu held his hand. “Keep your ticket carefully,” Ammu’s mouth said. Ammu’s trying-not-to-cry mouth. “They’ll come and check.” Estha nodded down at Ammu’s face tilted up to the train window. At Rahel, small and smudged with station dirt. All three of them bonded by the certain, separate knowledge that they had loved a man to death. That wasn’t in the
she was old enough to be an aunt. Rahel hadn’t come to see her, though. Neither niece nor baby grandaunt labored under any illusions on that account. Rahel had come to see her brother, Estha. They were two-egg twins. “Dizygotic” doctors called them. Born from separate but simultaneously fertilized eggs. Estha–Esthappen was the older by eighteen minutes. They never did look much like each other, Estha and Rahel, and even when they were thin-armed children, flat-chested, wormridden and Elvis
“Africa’s full of ugly black people and mosquitoes.” “You’re the one who’s ugly,” Rahel said, and added (in English) “Stupid dwarf!” “What did you say?” Kochu Maria said threateningly. “Don’t tell me. I know. I heard. I’ll tell Mammachi. Just wait!” Rahel walked across to the old well where there were usually some ants to kill. Red ants that had a sour farty smell when they were squashed. Kochu Maria followed her with the tray of cake. Rahel said she didn’t want any of the stupid cake. “Kushumbi,
were folded. The black sea smoothed. The creased waves ironed. The spume re-bottled. The bottle corked. The night postponed till further notice. Ammu opened her eyes. It was a long journey that she made, from the embrace of the one-armed man to her unidentical two-egg twins. “You were having an afternoon-mare,” her daughter informed her. “It wasn’t a mare,” Ammu said. “It was a dream.” “Estha thought you were dying.” “You looked so sad,” Estha said. “I was happy,” Ammu said, and realized that she