Arundhati Roy wins PEN Pinter award for ‘defining real truth of society’

Writer Arundhati Roy has won the PEN Pinter award for an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze that shows a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”, weeks after Delhi’s lieutenant governor sanctioned the prosecution of the writer under UAPA for comments made at a conference in 2010 on Kashmir.

“I am delighted to accept the PEN Pinter prize,” said Roy in a statement. “I wish Harold Pinter were with us today to write about the almost incomprehensible turn the world is taking. Since he isn’t, some of us must do our utmost to try to fill his shoes.”

Previous awardees of the Pinter prize include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Tom Stoppard and Carol Ann Duffy.

An open letter advocating for the Indian government to cease prosecution proceedings against the writer and Kashmiri scholar Sheikh Showkat was published a week ago, signed by many farm and labour unions, as well as academics and activists. Protests also took place in Bangalore and Delhi.