Campus Read 2022: Participate in Virtual Discussions on Select Works by Arundhati Roy

As part of the St. Louis Literary Award series of programs honoring the 2022 award recipient Arundhati Roy, the 2022 Saint Louis University Campus Read Book Talk Series offers opportunities to explore the themes of Roy’s work.

Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, which received the 1997 Booker Prize and was listed as a New York Times notable book of the year. Her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness was named to the Man Booker long list in 2017 and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Roy has been honored with Lannan Foundation’s Prize for Cultural Freedom (2002); the Sydney Peace Prize (2004); the George Orwell Award from the National Council of Teachers of English (2004); and the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing (2011).

The Saint Louis University Library Associates will honor Roy with the annual St. Louis Literary Award on April 28 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Registration to attend in-person or virtually is now open.  Amber Johnson, Ph.D., interim vice president of Diversity and Innovative Community Engagement, will moderate the event. 

Register for the Literary Award

A craft talk with Joya Uraizee, Ph.D., professor of English at SLU, will take place at 1 p.m. the next day on the campus of Saint Louis University.

Register for the Craft Talk

Saint Louis University launched the Campus Read in 2019 in conjunction with the St. Louis Literary Award. Before 2019, the University sponsored the Common First Year Read for incoming students.

Copies of Roy’s The God of Small Things and Capitalism: A Ghost Story, are available free of charge to SLU students, faculty and staff at the front desk of each of SLU’s libraries: Pius, the Medical Center, Law Library and Madrid Campus Library.

The Campus Read Book talk series is open to the public. 

Register to Participate in the Campus Read 

Architectural Fictions: Arundhati Roy and Literary Form Abstract

Dr. Alex Tickell's talk examines Arundhati Roy's experimental use of form in her two novels to date: The God of Small Things (1997) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). Tracing Roy's approach to literary form back to her undergraduate training as an architect and drawing on her later interviews in activism, Tickell underlines the importance of design aesthetics, urban planning, and architectonics in her fiction. Tickell suggests that the politics of Roy's work is intrinsic to the often striking and unsettling design choices of her writing and Tickell goes on to comment on the environmentalism and infrastructure as key aspects of her work. 

The event will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, and moderated Alex Tickell, Open University UK.

How to Liberate the Language

There are very few contemporary writers who have dedicated themselves to the cause of freedom with as much courage as Arundhati Roy. In her defense of democratic rights, what is immediately noticeable, particularly to a fellow writer, is the huge extent to which Roy finds freedom in her use of language. In both her fiction and non-fiction, it is in her style itself that she proclaims her dissent loudly and flamboyantly. There is so much to admire about this aspect of Roy's writing, the silk wrapped around the sharp edge of steel.

The event will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday, March 10, and moderated by Amitava Kumar, Vassar College, New York.

Future events and moderators include: 

• Thursday, Feb. 24 - 7 p.m., Sunita Parikh, Washington University in St. Louis
• Thursday, April 14 - 9 a.m., Brinda Bose, Jawaharlal  Nehru University, New Delhi
• Thursday, April 7 - 7 p.m. Priya Sirohi, Ithaca College & Cornell University, New York