ARUNDHATI ROY is the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. Her nonfiction writings include The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Listening to Grasshoppers, Broken Republic, and Capitalism: A Ghost Story, and most recently, Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, coauthored with John Cusack.
"A fiercely unforgettable novel...a love story with characters so
heartbreaking and compelling they sear themselves into the reader's
brain." -Patty Rhule, USA TODAY "Moving. . . powerful. . .The kind
of book that makes you feel like you've lived several times over.
[It] contains so much of everything: anguish and joy and love and
war and death and life, so much of being human. Ministry rip[s]
open the world to show us everything that is dazzlingly beautiful
and brutally ugly about it...Roy centers the vulnerable and the
unseen, making clear that love is the only way for individuals to
really meet across the borders of skin or country. Everything is
alive in Ministry, from emotions to people to the country itself.
It is this aliveness of every human as well as every animal and
thing that makes this novel so remarkable. Ministry is the ultimate
love letter to the richness and complexity of India--and the
world--in all its hurly-burly, glorious, and threatened
heterogeneity. Roy is a treasure of India and of the world." -Anita
Felicelli, LA Review of Books "A deeply rewarding work... Roy
writes with unabashed beauty...Images in The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness wedge themselves in the mind like memories of lived
experience." -Laura Miller, Slate "Stirring. . . humane and
impassioned . . . beautiful and rich. The novel has the feel of a
yarn...Roy's observations unspool as vivid and gimlet, whether she
is describing personal catastrophe or national
disasters...Brilliant writing--an ambitious story with a profound
moral integrity and a deep emotional impact. "-Kathleen Rooney,
Chicago Tribune "Epic in scope, sharply realized. . . an engaged
story, with many threads, that blends tragedy and political outrage
with a humane and hopeful vision of the future...The Ministry of
Utmost Happiness place[s] Roy at the forefront of Indian
literature." -Gregory McNamee, Kirkus Reviews "Dazzling. . .
expansive, touching . . . a novel teeming with indelible
characters. Roy shifts places, time periods, and viewpoints with
the grace of a master choreographer...Ministry is a beautifully
written, powerful story [that] spans a continent and several
decades of war and peace and people who live in places and on the
streets, as well as undercover and underground--a novel that's
worth the wait. Once again, Arundhati Roy has told a real story."
-Renee H. Shea, Poets & Writers (cover story) *"Brilliant. . . well
worth the wait. Roy looks unflinchingly at poverty, human cruelty,
and the absurdities of modern war; somehow, she turns it into
poetry. Highly recommended." -Kate Gray, Library Journal, (starred
review) "Roy's novel will be the unmissable literary read of the
summer. With its insights into human nature, its memorable
characters and its luscious prose, Ministry is well worth the
wait." -Sarah Begley, TIME "Propulsive, playful . . . this new book
finds Roy the artist prospering with stories, and writing in
gorgeous, supple prose. Again and again beautiful images refresh
our sense of the world. Sections of the book filled me with
awe--not just as a reader, but as a novelist--for the sheer
fidelity and beauty of detail--a terrific novelistic noticing. Roy
writes with astonishing vividness." -Karan Mahajan, The New York
Times Book Review (cover review) "Fearless . . . staggeringly
beautiful--a fierce, fabulously disobedient novel . . . so fully
realized it feels intimate, yet vibrates with the tragicomedy of
myth . . . Roy is writing at the height of her powers. Once a
decade, if we are lucky, a novel emerges from the cinder pit of
living that asks the urgent question of our global era. Roy's novel
is this decade's ecstatic and necessary answer." -John Freeman, The
Boston Globe "Magisterial, vibrant . . . Roy's second novel works
its empathetic magic upon a breathtakingly broad slate--inviting us
to stand with characters who refuse to be stigmatized or cast
aside." -Liesel Schillinger, O, The Oprah Magazine "A gem--a great
tempest of a novel: a remarkable creation, a story both intimate
and international . . . Here is writing that swirls so hypnotically
it doesn't feel like words on paper so much as ink on water. This
vast novel will leave you awed by the heat of its anger and the
depth of its compassion." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Compelling . . . musical and beautifully orchestrated. Roy's
depiction of furtive romance has a cinematic quality, as well as
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 . . . Ministry manages
to extract hope from tragedies witnessed." -Michiko Kakutani, The
New York Times "Powerful and moving . . . reminds us what fiction
can do. Roy's exquisite prose is [a] rare instrument. She captures
the horrors of headlines, and the quiet moments when lovers share
poems and dreams. Ministry is infused with so much passion that it
vibrates. It may leave you shaking, too. Roy's is a world in which
love and hope sprout against all odds, like flowers pushing through
cracked pavement." -Heller McAlpin, San Francisco Chronicle
"Glorious . . . remarkable, colorful and compelling . . . Roy has a
passionate following, and her admirers will not be disappointed.
This ambitious new novel, like its predecessor, addresses weighty
themes in an intermittently playful narrative voice. You will [be]
granted a powerful sense of the complexity, energy and diversity of
contemporary India, in which darkness and exuberant vitality and
inextricable intertwined." --Claire Messud, The Financial Times "A
lustrously braided and populated tale woven with ribbons of
identity, love, mourning, and joy--and tied together with yellow
mangoes, cigarettes, and damask roses." --Sloane Crosley, Vanity
Fair "Gorgeously wrought." -Entertainment Weekly, "Summer's 20
Must-Read Books" "If you want to know the world behind out
corporate-sponsored dreamscapes, you read writers like Arundhati
Roy. She shows you what's really going on." --Junot Diaz, in Vogue
"Ministry is 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. If
The God of Small Things was a lushly imagined, intimate family
novel slashed through with politics, Ministry encompasses wildly
different economic, religious, and cultural realms across the
Indian subcontinent and as far away as Iraq and California.
Animating it is a kaleidoscopic variety of bohemians,
revolutionaries, and lovers...With her exquisite and dynamic
storytelling, Roy balances scenes of suffering and corruption with
flashes of humor, giddiness, and even transcendence." --Daphne
Beal, Vogue "Affecting . . . A rangy and roving novel of multiple
voices; an intimate picture of a diverse cast of characters...We
see in detail not only their everyday lives but also their beliefs,
and the contexts that inform their actions...Tilo is the book's
beating heart, a beautiful and rebellious woman and a magical focal
point toward which all desire in the novel flows. Roy's instinct
for satire is as sharp as ever, and her stories build to a broader
portrait of India over the past few decades. Roy's sentences are
marked by an eloquence even as they string together various ideas
and elements. Her prose is in this sense radically democratic. And
her unmistakable style and her way of seeing the world become
something larger, too." --Amitava Kumar, BookForum "Roy returns to
fiction with tales that span from the mourned in a graveyard to the
beating hearts of the people of Delhi, masterfully conveying the
wide-ranging perseverance of the human soul." --Steph Opitz, Marie
Claire "It's finally here! Fans of The God of Small Things have
been waiting for Roy's next novel, and it doesn't disappoint. The
Ministry of Utmost Happiness is big, both in physical heft and in
ideas. It features an unforgettable cast of characters from across
India whose stories are told with generosity and compassion. The
novel's greatest feat is showing the ways in which religious
belief, gender identity, and even our safety in the world, are not
fixed--they have as much fluidity as Roy's astute plotting."
--Maris Kreizman, Vulture Summer Books Preview "Stunning-- a feat
of storytelling . . . Roy's lyrical sentences, and the ferocity of
her narrative, are a wonder to behold. The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness [is] a celebration." --Zak M. Salih, Richmond
Times-Dispatch "The first novel in 20 years from Roy, and worth the
wait: a humane, engaged near fairy tale that soon turns dark--full
of characters and their meetings, accidental and orchestrated alike
to find, yes, that utmost happiness of which the title speaks."
--Kirkus (starred review) "Ambitious, original, and haunting . . .
a novel [that] fuses tenderness and brutality, mythic resonance and
the stuff of headlines . . .essential to Roy's vision of a
bewilderingly beautiful, contradictory, and broken world."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A masterpiece . . . Roy joins
Dickens, Naipaul, García Márquez, and Rushdie in her abiding
compassion, storytelling magic, and piquant wit.... A tale of
suffering, sacrifice and transcendence--an entrancing, imaginative,
and wrenching epic." -Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) "To
say this book is 'highly anticipated' is a bit of an
understatement. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness will be a welcome
gift for those who've missed Roy's dazzling fiction." --Eliza
Thompson, Cosmopolitan, "11 Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down
This Summer" "Her new novel is larger, more complicated, more
multilingual, more challenging as a reading experience than The God
of Small Things, and no less immersing. This intricately layered
and passionate novel, studded with jokes and with horrors, has room
for satire and romance, for rage and politics and for steely
understatement. A work of extraordinary intricacy and grace."
--Gillian Beer, The Prospect (UK) "As she did in "The God of Small
Things," Roy astutely unpacks the layers of politics and privilege
inherent in caste, religion and gender identity. Her luminous
passages span eras and regions of the Indian subcontinent and
artfully weave the stories of several characters into a triumphant
symphony, where strangers become friends, friends become family,
and the disenfranchised find the strength to wrestle control of
their own narratives." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "This is the
novel one hoped Arundhati Roy would write about India. Satirical
yet compassionate, it channels the spirit of the
transgressive-mystical in subcontinental poetry rarely found in
Indian-English writing." --The Telegraph "This book, only second
from Roy's stable in the last twenty years, retains the
metaphorical music that she used to fair rapture in her first book.
The descriptions, spring to live with her subtle touch, and she,
almost, looks to have done that effortlessly." --Times of India "To
read Roy is to build a sense of wonder, incrementally. To ask
questions not of what we we're seeing of late, but what we've been
staring at the whole time... Love in The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness is harrowing, fragile and complicated and swears by
sacrifice, but also - and Roy makes sure of this - love is
unanticipated... The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is an example of
Roy's commitment to those who feel the riot inside of them. Who
refuse to be 'written out, ' who understand that the tiniest breach
in history, like 'a chuckle, ' of all things 'could become a
foothold in the sheer wall of the future.'" --The Globe and Mail
"The complex and ambitious plot set in Delhi centers on two women.
One was born intersex and the other is a freedom fighter, but both
are drawn to an abandoned infant. Questions of identity, gender,
ethnicity, and religion make this a deep and richly satisfying
read." -The Christian Science Monitor "From the fine-grained
affection that stirs her imagination springs an ethical
imperative--after all, how can one appreciate the world without
desiring to defend it? And it must be defended not merely from war
or political calamity, but from that natural, more insidious
phenomenon: forgetting." -Pahrul Segal, The Atlantic "Arundhati
Roy's prose is always a joy to read." -The Washington Times "The
Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a dazzling work of imagination - a
tumult of vibrant characters, stories and prose that engages deeply
with recent Indian history and the struggles of India's oppressed
peoples. To anyone who thought Roy was a one-hit wonder, the novel
is a full-throated rebuttal.... The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is
an exhilarating read, one that reminds you what great fiction can
accomplish." -Newsday "Arundhati Roy is an exceptionally gifted
writer, the kind who will send you into a panic about how
capitalism is chewing up the environment one moment, then sweep you
away from those earthly concerns with whimsical, musical prose the
next."- Chatelaine
"This intimate epic about India over the past two decades is
superb: political but never preachy; heartfelt yet ironic;
precisely poetic." -The Telegraph "Fans of Arundhati Roy's
bestseller The God of Small Things will be delighted to find out
that her new novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness occupies a
similar place. This one is a sprawling story in the tradition of
Charles Dickens about lovers and politics and religion and bad
luck. Roy immerses you both in her intricate prose and in the
subcontinent, from Kashmir to Delhi." -Condé Nast Traveler "The
reader is immersed in a world brought to life with deft clarity....
Roy's energy provides a platform for a story that is bursting with
spirit." -Noted "If I were to send one book into outer space to
send aliens a message about the human race, I would send this one.
It is a magic Persian carpet of a book, with hundreds of interwoven
tales within tales and colorful patterns reflecting the history of
our human condition." -San Francisco Chronicle "As always, Roy's
brilliance shines most in her choice of locales and the imagery
they invoke.... the novel's brilliance lies in how it captures
subtle moments, with attention to detail and sharp compassion."
-The Conversation "Roy merges her energies as a fiction writer and
an activist, shaping a rich narrative that's as complex and
multivalent as modern India.... There are plenty of moments of
dazzling wording and surprising exchanges." -Rigoberto Gonzalez,
Los Angeles Times "The ... novel is an epic charged with Roy's
politics and written in dense, lyrical, singular prose.... All of
which doesn't go even halfway to conveying the depth of
observation, humour, Dickensian detail, accumulating tales of city
life, both awful and extraordinary - the cows grazing on refuse, a
man who lives in a tree--that Roy discharges by the first hundred
pages." -Charlotte Sinclair, Vogue "Arundhati writes along the edge
of a kind of uncanny clairvoyance. She's an all-seeing,
mischief-making voodoo priestess." -John Cusack
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