The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Hardcover

Arundhati Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067008963X ISBN 13: 9780670089635

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2017

Synopsis

"How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.' The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on a journey of many years---the story spooling outwards from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi into the burgeoning new metropolis and beyond, to the Valley of Kashmir and the forests of Central India, where war is peace and peace is war, and where, from time to time, 'normalcy' is declared. Anjum, who used to be Aftab, unrolls a threadbare carpet in a city graveyard that she calls home. A baby appears quite suddenly on a pavement, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. The enigmatic S. Tilottama is as much of a presence as she is an absence in the lives of the three men who loved her. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once an aching love story and a decisive remonstration. It is told in a whisper, in a shout, through tears and sometimes with a laugh. Its heroes are people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, mended by love---and by hope. For this reason, they are as steely as they are fragile, and they never surrender. This ravishing, magnificent book reinvents what a novel can do and can be. And it demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy's storytelling gifts."

About this title

Review:

She is back with a heavyweight state-of-the-nation story that has been ten years in the making (Daily Mail)

Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first (Financial Times)

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness confirms Roy's status as a writer of delicate human dramas that also touch on some of the largest questions of the day. It is the novel as intimate epic. Expect to see it on every prize shortlist this year (The Times)

Heartfelt, poetic, intimate, laced with ironic humour...The intensity of Roy's writing - the sheer amount she cares about these people - compels you to concentrate...This is the novel one hoped Arundhati Roy would write about India (Daily Telegraph)

Teems with human drama, contains a vivid cast of characters and offers an evocative, searing portrait of modern India (Tatler)

A beautiful and grotesque portrait of modern India and the world beyond. Take your time over it, just as the author did (Good Housekeeping)

Fantastic. The novel is unflinchingly critical of power, and yet she empowers her underdog characters to persevere, leaving readers with a few droplets of much-needed hope. It's heartening when writers live up to the hyperbole that surrounds them (Hirsh Sawhney)

A kaleidoscopic story about the struggle for Kashmir's independence (Washington Post)

A sprawling, kaleidoscopic fable about love and resistance in modern India (The Guardian)

The follow-up we've been longing for - a poetic, densely populated contemporary novel in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy. From its beginning, one is swept up in the story... With her exquisite and dynamic storytelling, Roy balances scenes of suffering and corruption with humour and transcendence

(Vogue)

From the Back Cover:

'Glorious, colourful and compelling. Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first' Financial Times

'At magic hour; when the sun has gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unhinge themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke . . .'

So begins The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy's incredible follow-up to The God of Small Things. We meet Anjum, who used to be Aftab, who runs a guest-house in an Old Delhi graveyard and gathers around her the lost, the broken and the cast out. We meet Tilo, an architect, who although she is loved by three men, lives in a 'country of her own skin' . When Tilo claims an abandoned baby as her own, her destiny and that of Anjum become entangled as a tale that sweeps across the years and a teeming continent takes flight . . .

'Astonishing, filled me with awe' New York Times Book Review

'Captivating' La Repubblica (Italy)

'A gem - a great tempest of a novel: a remarkable creation, a story both intimate and international, swelling with comedy and outrage' Washington Post

'Amazing' The Hindu (India)

'An astonishing intimate epic' Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 067008963X
• ISBN 13: 9780670089635
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464