Arundhati Roy Secures The 2024 PEN Pinter Prize For Her Literary Contributions
The PEN Pinter Prize 2024 has been awarded to Indian author and activist Arundhati. Established in 2009 by English PEN, the annual award commemorates Nobel laureate playwright Harold Pinter. Roy, a Booker Prize-winning author, has written on human rights issues in India and global topics such as war and capitalism.
Criteria and jury for the award
The prize is given to a writer of outstanding literary merit from the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, or the Commonwealth. The recipient must demonstrate an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world and a 'fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies', according to Pinter's Nobel Prize in Literature speech. This year's jury included English PEN chair Ruth Borthwick, actor Khalid Abdalla, and writer Roger Robinson.
Previous winners and upcoming ceremony
Notable past recipients of the award include authors Michael Rosen, Margaret Atwood, Malorie Blackman, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard, and Carol Ann Duffy. Roy will be honoured at a ceremony co-hosted by the British Library on October 10 later this year, where she will also deliver an address.
Roy expressed her delight at winning this year's PEN Pinter Prize. English PEN chair Ruth Borthwick commended her for telling "urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty" and described her as an internationalist thinker with a powerful voice that cannot be silenced. In response to receiving the award, Roy stated: "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 fill his shoes."
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