19 years after The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy announces her second novel

Nineteen years after her debut novel The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize, Arundhati Roy has announced her second work of fiction. [caption id=“attachment_3032214” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Arundhati Roy. Image by Mayank Austen Soofi[/caption] The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, as Roy’s new novel is called, is being published by Hamish Hamilton UK and Penguin India. “I am glad to report that the mad souls (even the wicked ones) in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness have found a way into the world, and that I have found my publishers,” Roy said, in a statement released to the press on Monday, 3 October. Publishers Simon Prosser and Meru Gokhale said, “To publish this book is both a pleasure and an honour. The writing is extraordinary, and so too are the characters — brought to life with such generosity and empathy, in language of the utmost freshness, joyfully reminding us that words are alive too, that they can wake us up and lend us new ways of seeing, feeling, hearing, engaging. It makes the novel new — in the original meaning of novel.” Roy’s literary agent David Godwin also issued a statement: “Only Arundhati could have written this novel. Utterly original. It has been 20 years in the making. And well worth the wait.” Also read on Firstpost — More Arundhati Roy-John Cusack than Snowden: Things That Can and Cannot Be Said