The God of Small Things
Novel by Arundhati RoyWikipedia
26
MENTIONS
11
EPISODES
11
PODCASTS
Search complete. 26 mentions across 11 episodes found for "The God of Small Things".
Sep 18, 2026
DerekHOST
What are you reading at the moment?
Jonty RhodesGUEST
Uh, Arundhati Roy, um, The God of Small Things.
Jonty RhodesGUEST
So she's an Indian author.
Jonty RhodesGUEST
Um, yeah, really fascinating.
speaker_26AUDIENCE
But I think that if I were to go back and read a lot of modern novels, then I would see an occult spiritual element to these novels.
speaker_26AUDIENCE
And one book that comes to mind is, like, maybe The God of Small Things by, um, Arundhati Roy in India.
Jiang XueqinGUEST
What was it again?
speaker_26AUDIENCE
The God of Small Things.
speaker_26AUDIENCE
The God of Small Things, yeah.
Jiang XueqinGUEST
Yeah.
speaker_26AUDIENCE
Okay, thank you.
Annie DevenishGUEST
But I think my first introductions to India was, interestingly enough, really through historical fiction, and it was through classic books such as Passage to India and, uh, of course, The Jewel in the Crown being one of Paul Scott's, uh, Raj Quartet, um, which dealt with the nationalist movement in India, of course, written by, uh, ki- British authors, um, but gave a very interesting and intriguing picture for me on, uh, kind of the nationalist movement, the struggle against British colonialism, and the very sort of complex dynamics and relationships between British citizens and, uh, Indian subjects.
Annie DevenishGUEST
And then a bit later, I started to read, uh, fiction by Indian authors such as The God of Small Things, which, uh, gave me insight into caste discrimination.
Annie DevenishGUEST
And of course, being a South African, you know, the question of race discrimination has really defined, um, our country as well.
Annie DevenishGUEST
So thinking about some of those connections became interesting.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
A few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes, and that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned clock, must be resurrected from the ruins and examined.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
This is the premise of Arundhati Roy's 1997 novel, The God of Small Things.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
Set in a town in Kerala, India, called Aymanam, the story revolves around fraternal twins Rahel and Esther, who are separated for 23 years after the fateful few dozen hours in which their cousin drowns, their mother's illicit affair is revealed, and her lover is murdered.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
While the book is set at the point of Rahel and Esther's reunion, the narrative takes place mostly in the past, reconstructing the details around the tragic events that led to their separation.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
Roy's rich language and masterful storytelling earned her the prestigious Booker Prize for The God of Small Things.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
In the novel, she interrogates the culture of her native India, including its social mores and colonial history.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
One of her focuses is the caste system, a way of classifying people by hereditary social class that is thousands of years old.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
The river that was bursting with life in their childhood greets them with a ghastly skull smile, with holes where teeth had been, and a limp hand raised from a hospital bed.
BridgetHOST
And I haven't been sick like that for so long.
BridgetHOST
And, God, it's been not long enough between drinks.
BridgetHOST
It was awful.
LauraHOST
Yeah.
12 MINS LATER
LauraHOST
Doesn't she? So smart, so articulate.
LauraHOST
Crazy life.
LauraHOST
Such a crazy life and such an interesting memoir that, like The God of Small Things, revealed so much about India's history that I just am so ignorant to.
LauraHOST
Yeah,
Jim ThayerHOST
First is peeling the onion of a setting.
Jim ThayerHOST
The author is Arundhati Roy in his novel, The God of Small Things.
Jim ThayerHOST
It's a setting description.
Jim ThayerHOST
The location is semi-rural India.
Parul BavishiGUEST
You basically understand the fullness of another person's life.
Parul BavishiGUEST
And I really had that feeling reading that thinking, gosh, I've heard about her since I was a teenager, you know, the God of small things.
Parul BavishiGUEST
I studied that and I had no idea.
Parul BavishiGUEST
I truly had no idea.
5 MINS LATER
Parul BavishiGUEST
She talks about like a... it's like a lack of love like she she wasn't praised and she was seeking her mother's approval all the time she she is supposed to be writing a screenplay with her partner but all she can do is write this story that's come to her and
Samira El OmariHOST
that's
Parul BavishiGUEST
the god of small things and now that I've read the god of small things many years ago but now I understand it better The connecting point with all of this, with Matisse and the opening up, is that for me, I think books do this for us, we'll stop.
Parul BavishiGUEST
But for me, and it's all so subjective in person, what I enjoy, another person might not.
Annmarie KellyHOST
And like Tayari Jones, um, Arundhati Roy is someone who does not shy away from the hard thing, that you don't have the easy things without the hard thing, that families are complicated, that lives are long unless they aren't.
Annmarie KellyHOST
And I've read The God of Small Things once for a class and once on my own, and it's a hard book, but it's necessarily hard.
Annmarie KellyHOST
Because the stories and the people about which Arundhati Roy are writing, they were hard.
Meilan Carter-GilkeyGUEST
They had hard lives.
David LamettiGUEST
But it's by Arundhati Roy.
David LamettiGUEST
She wrote The God of Small Things.
David LamettiGUEST
She's a novelist.
David LamettiGUEST
And it's called Mother Mary Comes to Me.
David LamettiGUEST
It's a fantastic book.
David LamettiGUEST
She's a wonderful writer.
David LamettiGUEST
I mean, she's won the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things.
David LamettiGUEST
But I'm about halfway through.
John Manuel AriasGUEST
... share some sort of time-space with her.
John Manuel AriasGUEST
Um, The God of Small Things
Isabelle McConvilleHOST
That's so full circle for you, I feel
John Manuel AriasGUEST
It, it feels really full.
John Manuel AriasGUEST
It doesn't have to be space.
John Manuel AriasGUEST
It has to be some sort of emotion.
John Manuel AriasGUEST
The God of Small Things, of course.
John Manuel AriasGUEST
Um-
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