The long awaited second novel by award winning author Arundhati Roy is all set to come out next year.
In a Facebook post, publisher Penguin India announced that the writer’s next novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness will be published in June 2017. “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,” said Roy in a statement released by Penguin.
While Roy has gone on to publish a whole load of nonfiction, covering topics from the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to a condemnation of India’s nuclear tests, this is only her second work of fiction since The God of Small Things which won her a Booker prize way back in 1997.
The publisher said it was both a pleasure and an honour to be part of the project. “The writing is extraordinary, and so are the characters “ brought to life with such generosity and empathy, in language of the utmost freshness, joyfully reminding us that words are alive...” said Simon Prosser, the publishing director of Hamish Hamilton and Penguin Books UK, and Meru Gokhale, who is the editor-in-chief, literary publishing, of Penguin Random House India.
Roy's literary agent David Godwin also issued a statement: "Only Arundhati could have written this novel. Utterly original. It has been 20 years in the making. And well worth the wait."
