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Start giftingThe Ministry of Utmost Happiness
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn morePenguin presents the audiobook edition of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, written and read by Arundhati Roy.
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
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
LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE 2018
THE 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, García Márquez, 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...
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 long-listed 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.
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 long-listed 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
She is back with a heavyweight state-of-the-nation story that has been ten years in the making Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first A great tempest of a novel... which will leave you awed by the heat of its anger and the depth of its compassion 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 An author worth waiting two decades for 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 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 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 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 Teems with human drama, contains a vivid cast of characters and offers an evocative, searing portrait of modern India A beautiful and grotesque portrait of modern India and the world beyond. Take your time over it, just as the author did This intimate epic about India over the past two decades is superb: political but never preachy; heartfelt yet ironic; precisely poeticArguably the biggest publishing event of the year