Ministry of Utmost Happiness

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GOD OF SMALL THINGSLONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE 2018THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE and THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'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...'A sprawling kaleidoscopic fable' Guardian, Books of the Year'Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first' Financial Times'A great tempest of a novel... which will leave you awed by the heat of its anger and the depth of its compassion' Washington Post

She is back with a heavyweight state-of-the-nation story that has been ten years in the making, Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first, 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, 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, Teems with human drama, contains a vivid cast of characters and offers an evocative, searing portrait of modern India

Arundhati Roy is the author of The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997 and has been translated into more than forty languages, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2017. Roy has also published several works of non-fiction, including The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Listening to Grasshoppers and Broken Republic. She lives in Delhi.