The Earthspinner shuttles between India and England, past and present, and unfolds over eight months. I see this as the central conflict in my previous novel as much as in my latest.” “We are being asked to dissolve our individuality and humanity into state-directed worship. There is only one right way, and it is the one dictated by the majority (George) Orwell saw it coming years ago, in Animal Farm,” says Roy in an email interview from Ranikhet, Uttarakhand, where she lives with her husband, author and publisher Rukun Advani, and their four dogs-Piku, Soda, Barauni and Biscoot. But in our country, what you paint or write, who you marry, what you eat, what you name your child-all of it is a battleground.

Its foremost concern, an echo from her previous novel, All The Lives We Never Lived, is creativity and how artists battle constraints to assert its absolute importance in their lives.Įlango, a potter, lives on the edge, like most of the finest craftspeople in India, and yet is driven by the need to make art, like Gayatri Sen Rosario, the carefree protagonist of All The Lives, who rebels against tradition and marital entrapment to pursue a career as an artist.Īlso Read | How Girish Karnad embraced many Indias in his life and workĪll Elango wants to do is translate his vision of a clay horse on fire into a terracotta sculpture and marry a Muslim woman he loves. Anuradha Roy’s new novel, The Earthspinner, is shot through with her trademark subtlety, elegance and lyricism.

Character artist anu radha