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Published: 07/06/2018
A triumphant return from Arundhati Roy, 20 years after her Booker Prize-winning debut The God of Small Things. An interwoven portrait of contemporary India: ambitious, exuberant and unforgettable.
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017
A richly moving new novel—the first since the author’s Booker-Prize winning, internationally celebrated debut, The God of Small Things, went on to become a beloved best seller and enduring classic.
How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a sub-continent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety— in search of meaning, and of love.
In a graveyard outside the walls of Old Delhi, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby suddenly appears, just after midnight. In a snowy valley, a bereaved father writes a letter to his five-year-old daughter about the people who came to her funeral. In a second-floor apartment, a lone woman chain-smokes as she reads through her old notebooks. At the Jannat Guest House, two people who have known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another, as though they have just met.
A braided narrative of astonishing force and originality, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once a love story and a provocation—a novel as inventive as it is emotionally engaging. It is told with a whisper, in a shout, through joyous tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Its heroes, both present and departed, have been broken by the world we live in—and then mended by love. For this reason, they will never surrender.
Humane and sensuous, beautifully told, this extraordinary novel demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy’s storytelling gifts.
Want to read more about Arundhati Roy's long-awaited return to fiction? Simon Prosser, Hamish Hamilton's Publishing Director, describes the extraordinary moment he received the manuscript for The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241980767
Number of pages: 464
Weight: 319 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 27 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
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
Compelling, musical, cinematic... [A] genuine poignancy and depth of emotion. Her gift is for the personal: for poetic description [and an] ability to map the complicated arithmetic of love and belonging . . . The Ministry of Utmost Happiness manages to extract hope from tragedies - The New York Times
A passionate political masterpiece - Times Literary Supplement
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