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City News – Arundhati Roy’s New Novel After 20 years is... ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’

City News – Arundhati Roy’s New Novel After 20 years is… ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’

October 3, 2016 · by The Delhi Walla · in General

After ‘The God of Small Things’.

[Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Arundhati Roy, the novelist, is a distinguished Delhiwalla and The Delhi Walla is happy to read the news just tweeted by Simon Prosser of Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Books–“Announcing big news this morning! We will publish ARUNDHATI ROY’s new novel THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS in June”!

Full press release here:

Hamish Hamilton UK and Penguin India are proud to announce that they will publish THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS by Arundhati Roy in June 2017. It is her first work of fiction since THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, which won the Booker prize nineteen years ago in 1997.

ARUNDHATI ROY: ‘I am glad to report that the mad souls (even the wicked ones) in THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS have found a way into the world, and that I have found my publishers.’

SIMON PROSSER & MERU GOKHALE: ‘To publish this book is both a pleasure and an honour. What an incredible book it is—on multiple levels; one of the finest we have read in recent times.

The writing is extraordinary, and so too are the characters – brought to life with such generosity and empathy, in language of the utmost freshness, joyfully reminding us that words are alive too, that they can wake us up and lend us new ways of seeing, feeling, hearing, engaging. It makes the novel new – in the original meaning of novel.’

DAVID GODWIN: ‘Only Arundhati could have written this novel. Utterly original. It has been 20 years in the making. And well worth the wait.’

Note:
Meru Gokhale is Editor-in-Chief, Literary Publishing, Penguin Random House India
Simon Prosser is Publishing Director of Hamish Hamilton & Penguin Books UK
David Godwin is Arundhati Roy’s literary agent.

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The blogger is a devotee of Sufi Saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and Author Arundhati Roy

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Biography of The Delhi Walla

Since 2007, Mayank Austen Soofi has been collecting hundreds of stories taking place in Delhi, through writing and photography, for his acclaimed website The Delhi Walla. Every day, Mayank walks around the city with his camera and notebook to track down the part of extraordinary that exists in the seemingly mundane aspects of urban lives. By exploring and documenting the streets, buildings, houses, cuisines, traditions and people of Delhi, his work is also an attempt to give the megalopolis an intimate voice, and to capture the passing of time in this otherwise restlessly changing city.

Mayank is also a daily columnist for Hindustan Times newspaper, and the author of ‘Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District’ (published by Penguin) and the four-volume ‘The Delhi Walla’ guidebooks (HarperCollins).

Mayank Austen Soofi compulsively publishes texts and photos on his website, Facebook and Instagram. Follow him:

http://www.thedelhiwalla.com/
https://www.instagram.com/thedelhiwalla/
https://www.facebook.com/mayankaustensoofi

Write to mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com

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