The God of Small Things - Tapa dura

'THEY ALL CROSSED INTO FORBIDDEN TERRITORY. THEY ALL TAMPERED WITH THE LAWS THAT LAY DOWN WHO SHOULD BE LOVED, AND HOW. AND HOW MUCH.'

The year is 1969. On the Cochin highway a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded in a workers' demonstration.

Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Estha, and so begins the tale. They grow up between vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their blind grandmother Mammachi's factory. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they try to fashion a childhood in the shade of the wreck that is their family – their lonely, lovely mother Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom pincher), their enemy Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grand-aunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth. They learn that Things Can Change in a Day, lives can twist into new ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river, 'grey-green, with fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night the broken yellow moon in it.'

In 'The God of Small Things', Arundhati Roy has given us a novel anchored to anguish but fuelled by wit and magic.

'The joy of 'The God of Small Things' is that it appeals equally to the head and the heart. It is clever and complex, yet it also makes one laugh, and finally, moves one to tears...Roy writes...with a fecund, teeming visuality that is entirely her own. A masterpiece, utterly exceptional.'
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, 'Harpers and Queen'

'Roy peels away the layers of her mysteries with such delicate cunning, such a dazzlingly adroit shuffle of accumulating revelations that to discuss the plot would be to violate it. Like a devotionally built temple, 'The God of Small Things' builds a massive interlocking structure of fine, intensely felt details. A novel of real ambition must invent its own language, and this one does.'
JOHN UPDIKE, 'New Yorker'

'A compelling story which somehow marries the deepest, smallest personal emotions with an epic narrative...There were times I had to stop reading this novel because I feared so much for the characters or I had to re-read a phrase or page to memorise its grace.'
MEERA SYAL, 'Sunday Express'

'It is rare to find a book that so effectively cuts through the clothes of nationality, caste and religion to reveal the bare bones of humanity. A sensational novel.'
CLAIRE SCOBIE, 'Daily Telegraph'

'Richly deserving the rapturous praise it has received on both sides of the Atlantic...'The God of Small Things' achieves genuine tragic resonance. It is indeed a masterpiece.'
CHRISTINA PATTERSON, 'Observer'