Arundhati Roy’s new novel released

The most awaited second novel of Arundhati Roy, titled, “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” is finally released- it went on sale on Tuesday. This is her second novel after a 20 year hiatus.

Her prize-winning debut The God of Small Things which won her the Man Booker Prize was in 1997. In this period she has extensively written on bold and difficult issues plaguing the country but no fiction. Over the past two decades, she wrote eight non-fiction books and several essays on subjects as diverse as the nuclear bomb, Kashmir, big dams, globalisation, Dalit icon and social reformer BR Ambedkar, her meetings with Maoist rebels and conversations with Edward Snowden and actor John Cusack.

Publisher Penguin described the book by saying that it takes the reader “from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi into the burgeoning new metropolis” and on to the troubled Kashmir Valley and the jungles of central India, racked by a long-running Maoist rebellion.