Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me secures 2026 NBCC Award, continues global recognition

Celebrated author and activist Arundhati Roy’s 2025 memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me (Penguin, 2025) continues to solidify its place in the zeitgeist and its cultural impact well into 2026, with its recent win at this year’s US National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award in the Autobiography category.

The NBCC presents awards “for the finest books published in English” in six categories each year, namely fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, poetry, and criticism, in addition to other recognitions such as the John Leonard Prize for the best first book in any genre and the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. Other winners this year include Nobel laureate Han Kang and poet Kevin Young. The 2025 NBCC Awards were presented on March 26, 2026.

Mother Mary Comes to Me also won the 2025 Mathrubhumi Book of the Year award in January this year and was named Blackwell’s Book of the Year 2025 and Foyles Book of the Year 2025. 

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Nobody writes like Arundhati Roy

In addition to these accolades, Roy’s memoir may continue to add to its list of awards as the year progresses. Mother Mary Comes to Me is currently shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and the British Book Awards 2026 Book of the Year – Non-Fiction: Narrative, and is a finalist for the 2026 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

The Women’s Prize recognises outstanding work by female authors for both fiction and nonfiction, with previous winners including Zadie Smith, Madeline Miller, and Susanna Clarke. The 2026 Women’s Prize winners will be announced on June 11, 2026.

The British Book Awards (also known as the ‘Nibbies’) Book of the Year recognises works across several genres and award categories, including fiction, non-fiction (narrative and lifestyle), children’s (fiction, non-fiction, illustrated). The 2026 winners will be announced on May 11, 2026.

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognise “books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity” across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with past winners including Wole Soyinka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ilya Kaminsky. The 2026 winners will be announced on April 15, 2026.