Arundhati Roy made a great splash in 1997 with publication of The God of Small Things, receiving the Brooker Prize for her first and to date only novel and thereby stepping suddenly and quite flamboyantly into the spotlight of international literary notoriety. Not surprisingly, most who have read her highly acclaimed novel have waited for another novel to follow in its wake. After nine years, a second novel has not yet followed. Roy has said she will write another novel when and if she feels ready and has a story that needs to be told, but some impatience among her earlier readers will of course have led them to investigate what she has been writing, if not another novel or other fiction.