Arundhati Roy dedicated her debut novel, The God of Small Things, to two people who, it was safe to assume, were her nearest and dearest: “For Mary Roy who grew me up,” she wrote, “Who loved me enough ...

For as long as the Indian novelist, Booker Prize winner and activist Arundhati Roy can remember, her mother was — or pretended to be — dying. A chronic asthmatic with a flair for drama, Mary Roy kept ...