Arundhati Roy wins PEN Pinter prize amid prosecution threat over held Kashmir comments

NEW DELHI: Indian author Arundhati Roy has been awarded the PEN Pinter prize two weeks after Indian authorities granted permission to prosecute the writer over comments she made about Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) 14 years ago.

The prize is awarded annually to a writer who, in the words of the late playwright Harold Pinter, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze on the world and shows a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.

Judges praised Roy, who won the Booker prize in 1997 for The God of Small Things, for her “incisive commentary on issues ranging from environmental degradation to human rights abuses”.