The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017

Description

'Astonishing' follow-up to the Booker Prize-winning, multi-million copy bestselling The God of Small Things '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 . . .' Anjum lives in a graveyard, gathering around her the misfits and outcasts of Delhi's bustling streets. Tilo is a Kashmiri woman, brilliant and beautiful, fated to be loved by three rival men. When Anjum takes in an abandoned baby, it is Tilo who claims the child as her own - and so begins a tale that will sweep across twenty years, crossing the cities and forests of a teeming continent . . .

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.

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 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 *