Arundhati Roy to Embark on 6-City North American Book Tour to Promote Her Memoir ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’
- The memoir marks Roy's first foray into autobiographical writing, offering an intimate exploration of her complex relationship with her late mother.
Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy will tour North America this September to promote her highly anticipated debut memoir, “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” publisher Simon & Schuster announced.
The memoir marks Roy’s first foray into autobiographical writing, offering an intimate exploration of her complex relationship with her late mother, Mary Roy, who died in September 2022. Roy describes her mother as both “my shelter and my storm” — a formidable woman who founded a school in Kerala, India, and profoundly shaped the author’s life and literary career.
“Heart-smashed” by her mother’s death, Roy began writing the memoir to process her grief and understand her complicated feelings toward the woman she left at eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.”
The memoir traces Roy’s journey from her childhood in Kerala through her rise as an internationally acclaimed novelist and essayist. With the same sweeping scale as her novels “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” the book promises to be “an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace.”
The memoir has already garnered critical acclaim, earning a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, which praised it as “an intimate, stirring chronicle” that “revives both an extraordinary woman and the tangled complexities of filial love.”
Roy, who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for “The God of Small Things,” has established herself as both a literary powerhouse and political voice. Her novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017 and translated into more than 40 languages. Recently, she received the European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement in 2023 and the PEN Pinter Prize in 2024 for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.”
The memoir has already garnered critical acclaim, earning a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, which praised it as “an intimate, stirring chronicle” that “revives both an extraordinary woman and the tangled complexities of filial love.”
Book Tour Schedule
September 10
Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
September 12
Convocation Hall
31 King’s College Cir, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
September 17
Vancouver Playhouse Theatre
600 Hamilton St, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 5N6
September 18
Seattle Arts & Lectures at Meany Hall
4040 George Washington Lane Northeast, Seattle, WA 98195
September 19
City Arts & Lectures at Goldstein Theater
275 Hayes St, San Francisco, CA 94117
September 20
Baldwin & Co.
1030 Elysian Fields Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117
All events begin at 12:00 AM and will be held in person.
“Mother Mary Comes to Me” has been selected as a LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2025, positioning it as one of the year’s most significant literary releases.