The ministry of utmost happiness

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GOD OF SMALL THINGSLONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE 2018THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE and THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'A sprawling kaleidoscopic fable' Guardian, Books of the Year'Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first' Financial Times'A great tempest of a novel... which will leave you awed by the heat of its anger and the depth of its compassion' Washington Post'A dazzling return to form' Independent'Intricately layered and passionate, a work of extraordinary intricacy and grace' Prospect'A masterpiece.

Roy joins Dickens, Naipaul, Garcia Marquez, and Rushdie in her abiding compassion, storytelling magic, and piquant wit.

An entrancing, imaginative, and wrenching epic' Booklist starred review '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...'So begins The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy's incredible follow-up to The God of Small Things.

We meet Anjum, who used to be Aftab, who runs a guest-house in an Old Delhi graveyard and gathers around her the lost, the broken and the cast out.

We meet Tilo, an architect, who although she is loved by three men, lives in a 'country of her own skin' .

When Tilo claims an abandoned baby as her own, her destiny and that of Anjum become entangled as a tale that sweeps across the years and a teeming continent takes flight...