Arundhati Roy's MemoirMother Mary Comes to MeIs a 'Soaring Account' of a Complex Relationship — See the Cover (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Arundhati Roy in 2019.Photo:David Levenson/Getty

David Levenson/Getty

Arundhati Roy is exploring her relationship with her mother in her highly-anticipated memoir.PEOPLE can exclusively reveal the cover of the acclaimed writer and activist’s forthcoming bookMother Mary Comes to Me, due out this fall via Scribner. The book, Roy’s debut memoir, details the writer’s relationship with her late mother, the educator Mary Roy.Roy, who is the author of novels like Booker Prize-winningThe God of Small ThingsandThe Ministry of Utmost Happiness, had a “complex” relationship with Mary, after running away at age 18. The author says she left her mother “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her," per the memoir’s synopsis. Mary, a women’s rights activist, was best known for winning a 1986 Supreme Court lawsuit that granted Christian women in India equal inheritance rights.

Scribner

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.“I have been writing this book all my life,” Roy said in a statement when the book was announced in September 2024. “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.”

Arundhati Roy.Mayank Austen Soofi

Mayank Austen Soofi

ThoughMother Maryis her first memoir, Roy is also the author of nonfiction books includingThe Algebra of Infinite Justice, a collection of political essays, andWalking with the Comrades, about government repression in India. Her memoir, per its publisher, is written with the “passion, political clarity and warmth” of the writer’s nonfiction, too.

source: people.com