The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is one of my all-time favourite books.
It is a most strange novel in which the story is revealed in the first few pages.
It tells the story of a Syrian Catholic family in Ayemenem, Kerala. It is the story of people who broke the "Love Laws that lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much."
It has all the elements of a blockbuster - scenic location, innocent love, the scent of scandal, the tragedy of death, and so on.
Well, that is not the reason why I like this book.
On another level, if you see, the book is a linguistic feast. The words have a magical quality in the way they are combined. The sounds of the phrases, the word pictures they create in the reader's mind, and their meanings are a rare treat.
The book won the 1997 Booker Prize and made big waves as the first novel written by a young and beautiful girl.
One very interesting fact is that Arundhati Roy had several offers to adapt the book into a film. Yet she refused because she feels that a film creates a single image of the story for the audience whereas a book creates a thousand different images in the minds of the readers.
Therefore, I read the book again. And again.
