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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Arundhati Roy

$22.99

Paperback

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English
Penguin
30 April 2018
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION

'How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.'

In a city graveyard, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet between two graves. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby appears quite suddenly, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. In a snowy valley, a father writes to his five-year-old daughter about the number of people that attended her funeral. And in the Jannat Guest House, two people who've known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another as though they have only just met.

Here is a cast of unforgettable characters caught up in the tide of history. Told with a whisper, with a shout, with tears and with laughter, it is a love story and a provocation. Its heroes, present and departed, human and animal, have been broken by the world we live in and then mended by love -- and for this reason, they will never surrender.

By:  
Imprint:   Penguin
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 129mm,  Spine: 27mm
Weight:   319g
ISBN:   9780241980767
ISBN 10:   0241980763
Pages:   464
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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 longlisted 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.

Reviews for The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

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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