Book Review: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

Having published just one novel – the Booker Prize-winning The God Of Small Things, now 20 years old – Indian writer Arundhati Roy has become a household name, and an author celebrated for her ability to capture India’s contemporary social landscape. Her second novel, The Ministry Of Happiness, is further proof of her important place in the Indian literary canon.

It fuses several stories from across the subcontinent and examines ethnicity, religion, sex, love and gender in a way that reaches out to our inner humanity, while simultaneously containing a wider message for Indian society. Playing freely with narrative modes and voices, and opting not to follow a chronological time-frame, Roy foregoes a rigid structure in favour of writing that packs an emotional punch.

Moving, devastating and at times very funny, The Ministry Of Happiness is likely to land Roy yet another Booker nomination.