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...
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[She lived in the graveyard like a tree]***
(@PenguinUKBooks, 1 June 2017, 464 pages, ebook, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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I had very high expectations for this book because I loved the author's book The God of Small Things so much. This is an excellent book just not quite as amazing as The God of Small Things. This shares a lot of similarities with the other book, same location, similar culture and some common themes. I'm pretty sure one of the characters has the same name as a character in the other book but not sure if this is the same person, a coincidence or my imagination. The beautiful, lyrical writing is just as I expected. This is a lush book to be absorbed. I am not familiar with Kashmir so found the brutal, unrepentant actions of these men in uniform shocking at times. The book, the characters and events that take place felt very real. I hope Roy writes another novel.
