Praise for Anuradha Roy.

'Every once in a great while, a novel comes along to remind you why you rummage through shelves in the first place... Why you read... This, you think, is the feeling you had as you read Great Expectations or Sophie's Choice or The Kite Runner. This is why you read fiction at all.'– Marie Arana, Washington Post

'Compulsively readable' – Manil Suri, New York Times

'Indeed, there is a gentle perfection to the way Roy writes – unhurriedly but with soft precision, using words and phrases that are so apt they almost do not register separately, fusing form and content flawlessly' – The Hindu

'A writer of extreme brilliance, humanity and grace' – Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen

'Roy's storytelling is practically flawless. The pace is taut and the characters compelling enough to keep the reader engaged until they have turned the very last page.' – Annie Zaidi, Live Mint

Praise for the book

'An emotionally intelligent, witty, and inventive novel: one that follows passions fired into love and hatred, as well as moulding an intricate coming-of-age novel in miniature' – Sydney Morning Herald

'Poetic and deeply profound... Reading it is like being caught in an intense storm that is exhilarating but also dark and violent. Roy's ability to capture the fragility and tragedy of life will stay with you long after you've finished reading.' – Karen Williams, Good Reading Magazine, Australia

'Syncretism and unconditional love form the pulsating heart of this thoughtful novel...comes like a breath of sweet, fresh air. The first thing about the novel is its gentleness of tone. Though it tells of violent and traumatic acts, it does so with such a calm, reflective and understanding tone that one is left thinking, with a touch of sadness, of so much that could have been otherwise... At the warm, throbbing heart of the story is a little dog... It is the little dog who can cross the boundaries that seem impassable to humans.' – Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, The Hindu

'The Earthspinner captures the mood of sectarian strife and futile fanaticism in contemporary India. And yet it is a quiet, gentle work, never gratuitous; Roy does not care to make grand political statements, nor is she interested in presenting a "novel of ideas". ... Intricate yet intimate, the novel allows imagination to fill the rest – as all good fiction should.' – Sana Goyal, Guardian

'In Roy's expert hands, the prose becomes as malleable as clay...the disparate narrative units... never seem incoherent. Instead, a fine balance has been achieved through the consonance of themes. Indeed, for a novel of 220 odd pages, The Earthspinner manages to embrace an astonishing array of themes... The literary and mythological references, coupled with Roy's vivid descriptive prose, provide a rich texture to the narrative. The subtle moments of foreshadowing add to the narrative sophistication.' – Chandrima Das, Telegraph

'A quiet and moving work that gathers together an intricate web of modern lives and experiences, but breathes into them the elemental power of mythology, of the natural world, and of human love and hate... Here, both beauty and truth are terrible, incendiary, consuming. But Roy shapes it all with the touch of a seasoned potter, deft and light.' – Mandakini Dubey, Biblio

'Anuradha Roy returns with another beautifully perceptive novel... A quiet but powerful novel...it becomes a clarion call for the importance of creativity and art amid a world that all too often finds destruction an easier option.' – Ben East, National

'Anuradha Roy's new novel, The Earthspinner, is shot through with her trademark subtlety, elegance and lyricism.' – Nawaid Anjum, Mint Lounge

'Set in the '80s, communal strife is found to be dominating class structures and seeping through the chambers of art spaces in this grittily paced novel...' – Shreshtha Saha, Telegraph

'

Anuradha Roy's new novel fluidly tells unconnected stories and overwhelms you.

What describes the expanse of themes in this novel is both change and the resistance to it...brilliantly captures the joy and struggle of creative release. Sometimes the entire experience of reading the novel seemed to fittingly replicate the rhythm of the artist – the flowing and halting beats of creating something... Even in the forms it assumes, the book is devoted to multiplicity. It is rich in myth and allegory, generous in fleshing out its characters.' – Gayathri Sankar, Scroll

'A tale of hope shaped from the mud of a potter's village. An exquisite portrayal of empty-nest, loneliness, broken relationships; the quest of an artist that's as ancient as the art itself, his love and defiance of social divisions and how he nearly paid for this audacity with his life.' – L. Subramani, Deccan Herald

'Roy celebrates art, creativity and inclusion while simultaneously portraying a world on the brink of destructive fanaticism' – Guardian

'Roy's writing has the weight and clarity of prose from a more thoughtful age. Most masterful of all is the way she leaves loose ends trailing after the last page... In less skilled hands these unanswered questions may have annoyed a reader, but here they magnify the illusion of an ever-expanding reality that all good fiction creates.' – Latha Anantharaman, India Today

'A lucid and enjoyable novel.' – Nick Major, The Herald

'Anuradha Roy's new novel employs a fable-like narrative to lay bare the morally suspect skeletons of contemporary India... A stirring meditation of loving a world whose moral conscience seems to be on the brink of irreversible change.' – Arman Khan, Grazia

'Roy blends viewpoints and stories from different worlds with effortless grace and compelling movement as she takes us through time, class, cultures and mores. She does this with a remarkable lightness of hand and subtlety and, above all, without lecturing to the reader' – Nayantara Roy, Deccan Chronicle and Asian Age

'Reading Anuradha Roy is always a treat. She spins her stories slowly – taking her time to craft her sentences. The Earthspinner...is no different. Vividly imagined... As ambitious as the clay horse which Elango, one of the main characters, dreams of creating.' – Mandira Nayar, Week

'The novel sends out a gentle, yet powerful message about fanaticism against reason and humaneness.' – Hindustan Times

'Sunil Gavaskar's square drive and the ancient supercontinent Gondwanaland cohabit with stories of land grabs and black magic in Anuradha Roy's new novel The Earthspinner. But it is a potter, whose inspiration comes from ancient myths and wards, who works hard on clay, that holds fort amid violence and uncertainty.' – Faizal Khan, Financial Times

'

. . . deeply resonant with the world of today. The novel is a haunting investigation into grief,

loss and the need for creative impulse to rise above it all. Finally, The Earthspinner is about the fragility of the freedoms to live and love the way we want.' – Reader's Digest

 

In Earthspinner, Roy delves into the life and mind of Elango the potter, who must navigate complicated and impossible love, the dedication of a beloved pet, his own passion for creativity and a world turned upside down by the petty violence that characterizes the present day – this is an intricate, wrenching novel about the changed ways of loving and living in the modern world.