The Ministry of Utmost Happiness ★★★☆☆

Roy writes like a dream and her prose is sometimes literally poetry. You cannot best her when she's at her evocative best. But this novel felt like a non-fiction account that's disguised as fiction. She has strong (and admirable) opinions about India's domestic affairs and as a longform essay, it's perfect. But in her effort to put out her next novel, she seemed to be in a haste although it seems it was a work in progress for a while. There are perhaps 2-3 books in here which by themselves would've been wonderful to savor.

• Format: 465 pages, Kindle Edition
• Published: June 6, 2017 by Knopf
• ISBN: 9781524733162 (ISBN10: 1524733164)
• ASIN: B01NBZXMTT
• Language: English

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.

The engine of Roy's story is a hijra (India's third gender) named Anjum, and the story begins with her unrolling a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard she calls home. Anjum's charisma draws a vibrant assemblage of outcasts to join her--other hijras, Kashmiri freedom fighters, activists, orphans, low-caste Hindus and Muslims, and a host of animals. Anjum's home is a place where the formerly unwanted embrace each other's true selves.

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 is a child born in Srinagar and buried in its overcrowded Martyrs’ Graveyard. The second is 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 Arundhati Roy’s storytelling gifts.