iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
Indian author Arundhati Roy was named as the winner of the PEN Pinter Prize for the year 2024. Roy, 62, said she is “delighted” to win it. “I wish Harold Pinter were with us today to write about the almost incomprehensible turn the world is taking. Since he isn’t, some of us must do our utmost to try to fill his shoes,” she said, as quoted by BBC.
The PEN Pinter Prize is set up in memory of playwright Harold Pinter. The award recognizes writers of “outstanding literary merit” who take an “unflinching” look at the world, BBC reported.
Roy, who primarily writes about human rights issues in India, is also a Booker Prize-winner, which she won for the 1997 novel The God of Small Things.
Her latest achievement was hailed by English PEN chair Ruth Borthwick, who praised Roy for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty”.
“While India remains an important focus, she is truly an internationalist thinker, and her powerful voice is not to be silenced,” Borthwick said, as quoted by BBC.
A polarizing figure, the 62-year-old could face prosecution by the Indian government for her statements she made about Kashmir, a sensitive issue in the Asian nation.
She has remained a fierce critic of the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and its alleged targeting of Muslims in India. Roy has also spoke openly about the dwindling press freedom in the country during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stint.
Though announced, Roy will receive the prize on 10 October. The ceremony will be co-hosted by the British Library, the BBC report stated. She will join others such as Michael Rosen, Malorie Blackman, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard and Carol Ann Duffy, who won the award before her. PEN Pinter Prize was set up in 2009 by English PEN.
