The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017

by Arundhati Roy

Hardcover, 2017

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Fiction

Publication

Hamish Hamilton (2017), Edition: 01, 464 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:New York Times Best Seller Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Amazon, Kirkus, The Washington Post, Newsday, and the Hudson Group A dazzling, richly moving new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The God of Small Things The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on an intimate journey of many years across the Indian subcontinent�from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war. It is an aching love story and a decisive remonstration, a story told in a whisper, in a shout, through unsentimental tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Each of its characters is indelibly, tenderly rendered. Its heroes are people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, patched together by acts of love�and by hope. The tale begins with Anjum�who used to be Aftab�unrolling a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard she calls home. We encounter the odd, unforgettable Tilo and the men who loved her�including Musa, sweetheart and ex-sweetheart, lover and ex-lover; their fates are as entwined as their arms used to be and always will be. We meet Tilo�s landlord, a former suitor, now an intelligence officer posted to Kabul. And then we meet the two Miss Jebeens: the first a child born in Srinagar and buried in its overcrowded Martyrs� Graveyard; the second found at midnight, abandoned on a concrete sidewalk in the heart of New Delhi. As this ravishing, deeply humane novel braids these lives together, it reinvents what a novel can do and can be. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy�s storytelling gifts.… (more)

Media reviews

http://malinichaudhri.wordpress.com

This review gives order and intelligence to the spectrum of bad reviews about this mysterious book. This book contains a secret code of mystical nature, and must be read several times. Attainment is as good as the trouble inflicted in the lifetime of the protagonist....Read on

User reviews

LibraryThing member fizzypops

Wow. Powerful stuff. It left me reeling. Such a devastating critique of aspects of life in India. Don't want to spoil for others but at times I wondered if I had the stomach to keep going, but I am so very glad that I did. What a masterpiece of modern literature. Thank you, Ms. Roy, it was a

privilege to read these beautiful words.

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LibraryThing member lisapeet

I had to virtually put this down about 2/3 of the way through because my checkout ran out and NYPL sucked the ebook back into its hungry maw. I'm liking the imagery—I guess that's kind of a given in a well-written book set in India, huh?—and the insider baseball view of regional politics. But

it's distractingly diffuse. Hard to say without having finished, but it feels like all the disparate parts are building to form some kind of modern fairy tale, but doing that takes a little more... let's say concision. There's too much writing in here to be a real allegory, if that's what the book's trajectory is about. But the writing is good, and for the most part it's enjoyable, so I'll pick it back up again and finish when my hold comes back in in another nine weeks—though I'm pretty sure I won't remember a damn thing about the story structure by then, since there are a few too many threads to pin a narrative on right now.

Finally got the chance to finish this and I stand by my original assessment. Great writing, really vivid (sometimes uncomfortably so), and I like what she set out to do with the sprawling character pieces tied into the complex politics. And it did come together at the end in a way that was pretty satisfying. But it was still just a bit too sprawling for me—I think a little tighter would have served the story well. Still, a challenging job nicely done.

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LibraryThing member kerns222

Wowed. Beaten in the head with history. Wowed.

I did have to go back about half way thru and reread (quickly) to put everyone into place. There are multitudes and the storytelling moves about. You must be agile. And remember all because they return.

But when you finish you know the torturers, the

torturees, the dead bystanders, the poor, the doing OK, the escapees, the thieves and on and on and on.

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LibraryThing member TommyB

Interesting story of the conflict between Kashmiri separatists and the Indian government

LibraryThing member alexbolding

Explicitly political second novel of Arundhati after a twenty year fiction black-out. The plot is brilliant but probably difficult to follow for many, especially those who are unfamiliar with India, the rise of the BJP and Kashmir. Roy opts from the start to focus on a group of marginalised

outcasts of Indian society, the flotsam of Hindu nationalist Progress, hermaphrodites, muslim cow buriers, transvestites, harijan protesters, and Kashmir freedom fighters. And yet she manages to cross the lines by including characters who work for India’s security and Police force. The core cast of characters seem to share their participation in a drama group that prepares a play under the flamboyant leadership of a gay Britisher. The play is never performed due to the outbreak of communal violence. I adored Roy’s sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek humour and devastating yet subtle critique of Hindu nationalism. Her plea for an India that is home to as diverse a cast of people as possible shines through in all its brilliance, scorching the nationalist platitudes of its recent rulers. This was worth waiting for, and yet … Arundhati give us more!

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LibraryThing member Cariola

It has been twenty years since Roy published a work of fiction, the Booker winning . In between, she has focused on political causes and nonfiction, also mostly political in nature. One of her pet causes is the struggle for Kashmiri independence from India, and, sadly, her enthusiasm for the cause

overwhelms this much-anticipated new novel.

The novel opens with a metaphor that won't be clear until nearly the conclusion: the vultures are dying, hanging in the trees or leaving empty spaces among the branches. Roy then moves to the story of the novel's most interesting and empathetic character, a child named Afta whose mother tries to hide the fact that he is a hermaphrodite for as long as possible. But gender will out, and Aftab soon becomes Anjum, dressing and acting like a woman and eventually moving in with a small "family" of hijra--hermaphrodites, cross-dressers, and transgender persons who, the author tells us, will never be accepted because they have no firm identity or place in Indian society. Traditionally, the hijra live on the outskirts of society, often making a living by begging or prostitution; they are known for invading wedding parties, hoping to get paid to remove their raucous presence. By taking us inside this little group, Roy shows us the depth of their familial relationships as well as their rivalries. Anjum is particularly resourceful: she sets up a thriving, if not exactly five-star, guest house on top of a cemetery near an approved protest area. Most of the guests are, in one way or another, involved in political causes--protesting, fleeing persecution, waiting for the time to strike.

It's at this point that the novel takes a sharp turn away from Anjum to focus on Tilo, a woman whose great love, Musa, is a Kashmiri terrorist. This section takes up at least half of the book, and have to admit that I struggled to complete it at this point. Any thought of a cohesive plot went out the door as the various points of the plot spun back and forth through time, and the narrative, while holding glimmers of interest, focused mainly on political diatribe (the Kashmiri cause). I started to find the characters, who often disappeared or went in disguise, confusing. Roy attempts to link back to the characters in Anjum's guest house, but it's hard to keep everyone and everything in order (which leads me to believe that the book might be appreciated more on a second reading--preferably with a guide). When the story returned to the guest house inhabitants at the end, I did feel a sense of things coming together--but I was left wondering just what I had missed in that very long central section. I am sure that Roy wanted to make statements about freedom and oppression (the more you defeat us, the more you destroy yourselves), gender, family, class--maybe too many big ideas for one novel.

is an ambitious work, but perhaps not a wholly successful one. The writing itself is stellar, and Roy shows her ability to create intriguing characters. As I mentioned, a rereading might do it better justice, but I'm not sure that I would be inclined to pick it up again.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

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LibraryThing member brangwinn

I have loved the past novels of Roy, but this book failed to hold my attention as _The God of Small Things_ did. I’m not sure disjointed is the right word for the way it was written, but I could never gain empathy for the main characters, although I certainly sympathized with what life must be

like for homosexuals in India. I guess part of my problem in reading it was that I kept looking for a plot and there wasn’t one.

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LibraryThing member shazjhb

I love books set in India. I also love this author who unlike so many other writers does not write enough books. This was a wonderful novel. Who knew about the conflict in Kashmir beside the basic facts. I loved the people and could smell India as I read the book.

LibraryThing member southernbooklady

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is saturated in the vivid scenery and lush, over-the-top language I remember from The God of Small Things and that I find so beautiful and rewarding. It is also highly polemical -- it is hard to avoid the thought that each of the main characters Stands For

Something, which is not something I remember from Roy's first book, but then it has been 20 years since I read it. I find the politicization easy to tolerate, because it itself is so easily subsumed by the panorama Roy is painting, and because I am perennially drawn to explorations of people driven by ideals and visions. But the whole book is worth reading just for the account of the birth of the Jannat Guest House.

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LibraryThing member alexrichman

This flattered to deceive, for me. The first half appears to be building and building towards something, only for Roy to abandon those characters for an almost entirely new story. It's all gorgeously written, and filled with darkness and righteous anger, but didn't quite hang together.

LibraryThing member SonoranDreamer

The path of this story was unexpected, except for the lyrical writing of Arundhati. This is a realistic look of war and power, and the effects of war and power on average people's lives as they struggle to live normal lives within war. This book was not as good as I expected, and times I wanted to

stop reading it, but in the end it was a worthwhile read due to the revelation of lives I'd never see otherwise.

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LibraryThing member LynnB

This is a difficult book to review -- I really liked it, but only some of the time.

The book starts by telling the story of Anjum, a hermaphrodite who began life as a boy. Her mother tried to hide the reality from everyone. We follow Anjum's life in a community of "hijras" -- hermaphrodites,

transgendered people, transvestites -- for a while. Then, the book introduces new people and I found myself wondering what happened to Anjum and if we'd see her again, and why the first 100 or so pages were not connected to the rest.

"The rest" is the story of Tilo, an architect and the three men who loved her: Musa, a Kashmiri independence fighter, Biplab, who works for Indian's intelligence service, and Naga, a journalist whom she marries. This story jumps back and forth in time and can be hard to follow, but it is so beautifully written and so touching that I had to stop sometimes to deal with the images Ms. Roy created.

And we have the two "Miss Jebeen"s who bring Anjum and Tilo's stories together: a murdered child and a rescued child.

At the end, I was deeply moved by the stories and the amazing writing. I will definitely read this again and it's the type of book that knowing what's coming will only heighten the appreciation of story. I'm saying four stars....it may be a bit too ambitious to have so much in one book and the structure is frustrating....but what amazing writing and when you've finished it, you'll be glad you read it.

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LibraryThing member alanteder

This one fights you both literally and figuratively.

A [3] average is the best compromise as my rating sense ranged from [1] to [5].

I hate deckle edges and I won't lie. The fibres in the rough feathery edges tend to interweave so that you often find it difficult to turn single pages because two

pages will stick together. It always baffles me when I see "deckle edged" as a selling point in advertisements from book publishers. I suppose it is meant to signal a hearkening back to the era of handmade paper, but to me it is always a red flag of irritation to come.

Such is the case with Arundhati Roy's "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness," (TMoUH) which, aside from the difficulties presented by its structure and pacing also comes with the added physical barrier of deckle edging to make your reading experience even more frustrating.

Structure
TMoUH is organized into 12 chapters grouped into 5 parts. The 5 parts aren't numbered but the transitions are signalled by each part having a separate epigraph at its start. The 1st part is actually more an extended prologue (it is almost 1/3rd of the book at 144 pages out of 444 total).

The difficulty about this 1st part is that it introduces a whole smorgasbord of incidental characters who are not actually the main protagonists of the story, and this goes on for a very ... long... time. Each time we think the story is going to start to take off we are introduced to some new person or location or situation that necessitates a whole new background to be explained and filled in.

It actually took me about 2 months to get through this first 144 pages. I often found myself nodding off after having only read 2 pages a night and I worried this would be become a DNF. I ended up abandoning the book for a few weeks and then returned to it, dreading what part 2 would offer, only to find that the story actually started to move at this point and that I got through the next 300 pages in under a week.

Pacing
As mentioned above, you have to come to grips with how you are going to deal with the pacing that is forced on you by the structure. I even thought afterwards about what a different experience it would have been to start the book at part 2 and read it through to the end of part 5 with occasional looks at part 1 to fill in background.

Regardless, the real story is built around 4 characters who meet in part 2 while rehearsing a student production of the 1970 play "Norman, Is That You?" (which also became a 1976 film vehicle for Redd Foxx & Pearl Bailey). That situation itself is quirky enough and one of the play character's names becomes a secret code forevermore from that incident alone.

So the real heart of the story is the love quadrangle between architecture student Tilo and her relationships with eventual lover Musa (later a Kashmir militant), her later landlord Biplab (who becomes a member of the Indian security services) and her later husband Naga (who is a journalist who actually works as a security services agent). All of the drama and tragedy of the story is played out in the course of parts 2 to 5 and there are many great and moving passages here. There is wonderful humour as well, such as when Musa tries to convince Tilo that Las Kone (aka Leonard Cohen) is a great Kashmiri poet.

In any case, the book came alive for me then and I had no trouble in finishing it (except for the aforementioned deckle edges).

Characters
A List of Characters would have really helped readers keep track of who is who here. Without it you will constantly be confused, especially if you are finding the book slow going. This is another example of the book fighting you. Either write your own character list or perhaps refer to the one provided at Wikipedia.

Conclusion
I know this is a pretty unorthodox review but I just felt tempted to analyse and break down why I had such difficulties with this book. Likely a 2nd reading would be much easier as I would know what to expect. I do see from many other reviews that I'm not alone in having such difficulties even if some of them are only my pet peeves.

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LibraryThing member Calavari

I have to admit that I didn't really get this one. I love Roy's style and enjoyed the book, but I'm not entirely certain I understood it. I think it would make a great book club book for discussion and perspectives because there is so much to digest here. Maybe it'll end up as one of those books

that I only get in retrospect, years from now as I look back on it. That's happened a few more times than I'd like to admit with heavy novels like this.

I was excited to pick this one up this year after enjoying The God of Small Things last year. I find Roy's style poetic and it's in the little things like this:

Trees raised their naked, mottled branches to the sky like mourners stilled in attitudes of grief.

It gets me every time.

The length and breadth of this book is largely what caught me off guard and what kept me from really getting it on first pass. I wish someone I knew in regular life had read it so we can sit and talk about it. The book involves an interesting and diverse cast of characters with varying pasts that collide in an interesting way. Each character is given a background that is written as if they are taking turns being the protagonist which left me with the feeling that there was no central protagonist. At the same time, I enjoyed the whole story of each character and how they came to be at the place they all met at that time. It got a little disorienting when the individual stories begin and end at different times from the overall narrative, sometimes passed the point where they met and into the next phase of the story.

Mainly what the story serves to do is create a bigger picture of India and it's relationship with neighboring countries and relations inside of the country than I would ever expect inside of one book. It covers different castes and classes and backgrounds and genders and religions and family situations. My favorite is the first protagonist, Anjum, who is a hijra, which is a South Asian term for transwoman. I loved her character and that the book opened with her and a bit of the history of what a hijra is and has been in India and the use of the term instead of trans.

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LibraryThing member over.the.edge

"It was herself she was exhausted by. She had lost the ability to keep her discreet words discreet - a skill many consider to be the cornerstone of sanity"
Musa: " I don't know where to step, or how to go on. I stop where I shouldn't. I go when I should stop. There is weariness. But there is also

defiance. Together they define me these days. Together they steal my sleep, and together they restore my soul. There are plenty of problems with no solutions in sight. Friends turn into foes. If not vocals ones, then silent reticent ones. But I've yet to see s for turning into a friend. There seems to be no hope. But pretending to be hopeful is the only grace we have."
" enemies can't break your spirit, only friends can."

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LibraryThing member deeEhmm

I stopped a bit more than halfway through, when it became clear that my favorite character would kind of fade in importance through the rest of the book. I will probably take it up again in the coming months. Roy's wit and use of language is delightful, and I am intrigued by her examination of

Muslim life in Delhi.

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LibraryThing member csaavedra

People who flocked to read this novel because of their love for The God of Small Things were most likely up for a surprise. Because instead a second part to Roy's first novel, or something along the same lines, what we have in The Ministry can be best summarized as a novel that reflects very richly

the 20 years that have passed since her debut novel was published. 20 years that are filled with investigative journalism that has brought her to publish works like like Capitalism: A Ghost Story and Walking With The Comrades; work that has shown Roy's commitment to unraveling the intricate Indian society and its many failures, and the evolution that the country has seen during the last decades towards becoming a Hindu fascist state.

While Ministry is a work of fiction with a plethora of characters, its historical context is not, and that's probably where the richness of the book lies. Because the different character arcs that entangle through the novel are nothing out of the ordinary -- however fascinating each character's story might be, there's nothing in their life experiences that one couldn't possibly find in today's India, and that's both eye-opening and terrifying all the same. From the place of Hijras in Indian society, the discrimination of the Muslim population --specially since 9/11-- and the never-ending conflict in Kashmir, they all find place in this novel and give depth to characters that otherwise we might never get a chance to come to know.

So reader beware, this is not The God of Small Things; but if you put expectations of the sort aside and approach this book with patience and a bit of a stomach, you will find many fascinating stories that are totally worth reading and re-reading again.

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LibraryThing member arosoff

Arundhati Roy has said she's a storyteller, and that she rarely edits her works. She's accurate in her self assessment--she's a wonderful storyteller, and her work is visibly unedited. There's a lot of wonderful material in here, especially the beginning sections. The problems with the book are

twofold: the sections are not knitted together evenly. Her initial idea of how to divide the sections, by switching to Tilo's story once she appears with the baby, makes sense in theory but in practice, it's clunky. I enjoyed most of the politics in the novel--as much of it is cynical asides as dogmatic fury--but they overwhelm the section with Tilo and Musa. This is in part because Tilo's characterization is flawed: she's a kind of irresistible enigma whom we don't get to know very well internally. Her biography is too similar to that of Roy herself and of Rahel from The God of Small Things. The ending, also, is weak. It ties things up, but almost too neatly.

It should probably be about 3.5, for those of you who like these things quantified.

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LibraryThing member bdgamer

It’s always difficult to comment on Roy’s works. The God of Small Things was a fantastic read, telling a story of interesting characters who have had dreadful things done to them. That formula can only work once though, with later works losing the magic and charm, as evidenced by Khaled

Hosseini’s books. The same thing happens here in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, but truth be told, there’s still some magic in there to hold your interest.

Roy’s political affiliations and biases shine—nay burn—through the story. She weaves a narrative that covers almost all of the sociopolitical spectrum in the Indian subcontinent. First off, we have the struggle of the hijras told through Aftab/Anjum. That’s intertwined with the struggles of Old Delhi (and nationwide too) Muslims, especially focusing on the aftermath of the Gujarat riots. Then of course, we have the trinity of lovers – Naga, Musa, Biplob – and their love interest: Tilo. Through them we get both sides of the Kashmir conflict, though we veer straight into the pro-Kashmir territory as the narrative winds down. In between all this, minor characters come and go with their own agendas highlighting minor issues.

Roy handles Anjum’s narrative quite brilliantly, and I was wholly invested in her character by the end. Tilo and her hopelessly broken lovers, not so much. Their conflict felt forced but never uninteresting though. However, moving from the struggles of hijras to something as sensitive and significant as the Kashmir issue felt a bit unbalanced. The story suffers as a result, never really finding its rhythm in the sea of characters that are paraded about near the end.

Don’t get me wrong though. I loved the sub-stories, especially the Kashmir ones. I felt deeply saddened by how the conflict had affected the people of the region. As a matter of fact, Gulkak’s story resonated the most with me. However, all that felt overshadowed—heh, almost upstaged even—by Anjum’s arc. She, and her surrounding characters, paints a far more interesting picture of India.

Thing is, it’s a great book that’s dragged down in some chapters by unnecessary details that often derail your interest in the main arc. Roy’s writing has a magnetic quality about it, catching you in its dragnet of sociopolitical issues that need to be discussed. If that’s up your alley, then definitely give it a read. If you’re looking for something concise, look elsewhere.

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LibraryThing member jgoodwll

All India is here: the hijras, the poverty, the middle class, the corruption, the politics, the interminable problem of Kashmir, the double-dealing of the secret service. The confused chronology lost me: we keep going back 20 years, or forward 25 years; one incident is told twice from two different

angles. For a non-Indian, people's names are confusing: I would have liked a dramatic personae. An "I" appears in the middle of the book, but is not central to the story. In fact, it's impossible to summarise the story, there are so many sub-themes.

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LibraryThing member Gwendydd

I couldn't get into this. The characters were interesting, but the book just rambled with lots of little tangents and it's hard to keep track of what is important to the plot and what isn't, or even whether there is a plot at all.

LibraryThing member sleahey

This complicated novel reflects the complexity of the history, politics, religions, and culture of India. The lives of several main characters are traced, sometimes intersecting, always with the backdrop of the chaos and violence of countries in transition. Following the several plots of this book

required particular attention and patience from this reader, who was unfamiliar with the names and terminology. Roy's writing is elegant, and especially skilled in personifying abstract ideas, such as country and nature. The brutality perpetrated and suffered by the characters seems relentless at times--and that's the point.

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LibraryThing member Castlelass

It is hard to boil this book down to a succinct summary. There are two primary storylines. The first is about Anjum, born Aftab, an intersexual individual, reared as male, but who inclines to female. She faces many challenges as a hiira. The second is told by Tilo, an architect with many

relationship partners, one of whom is wanted for terrorism. This book hits on numerous social issues in India from partition to present. It is less a novel than the author’s examination these issues.

I enjoyed Anjum’s story. It is easy to empathize with her. If the entire book had been about her life, I would have probably loved it. The writing is solid in terms of the forms of expression, the breadth of language, and flow. This book has spurred me to read more non-fiction to learn more about India’s political situation and internal conflicts.

The structure of this book did not work for me. Tilo seems to come out of nowhere and derailed my interest in Anjum’s story. I could not discern an overarching plot. It comes across as scattered, even rambling at times. For example, there is literally an A to Z list of terms one would find in a Kashmiri to English dictionary. I normally like character-driven narratives, but in this case, many characters seem to exist to serve as illustrations of political points or historical atrocities the author is trying to highlight. I loved The God of Small Things but the best I can say about this book is that it is okay.

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