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The US-based Lannan Foundation has selected Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy for its fourth annual award for cultural freedom.
The award carries a cash component of $350,000.
"As both an artist and global citizen, Arundhati Roy writes about civil societies that are adversely affected by the world's most powerful governments and corporations. We are honoured to celebrate her life and her ongoing work in the struggle for freedom, justice and cultural diversity," foundation President J Patrick Lannan Jr said in a release from Santa Fe.
Roy has announced that 50 people's movements, publications, educational institutions and theatre groups will share the prize money, the release said.
The Prize for Cultural Freedom was established to recognise people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry and expression.
Roy first gained international recognition in 1997 with The God of Small Things, her first and only work of fiction to date. Later, in The Cost of Living, she condemned the Pokhran nuclear tests and displacement of the poor and tribals by the construction of massive hydroelectric dams.
Power Politics, her recent book, discusses privatisation of the country's power sector and the politics of writing.