Arundhati Roy’s “The Algebra of Infinite Justice’: A Work of Poetic Truth & Poetic Beauty

Abstract

After the achievement of her debut novel The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy tried her best to explore some realistic picture of the society through her non fictional works. All her critical essays which deal with the diverse themes of both the national and international upheavals are not dry and monotonous ideas, facts and statements but they are highly poetic and metaphorically integrated with the fabric of art and beauty. In her novel The God of Small Things the central theme is the confrontation between the big and the small, the haves and have nots. Similarly, her non fictional work has also the stamp of this great gap and disparity between the high and the low. Shibu Simon says:

“Arundhati Roy, through her non-fictional writings has taken the role of a spokesperson to support the dalit and the deserted. She takes up ecology and subalternity, the major themes of her novel, as social issues in her later role as an activist. Roy makes an transition from artistic to activistic writing through her nonfictional works. The fictional subaltern characters of The God of Small Things are being replaced by the real subalterns in her nonfictional works. The change is from fiction to reality and from the impossible into the possible.” (Simon, Shibu,10)