biNew York Times /iBest SellerbrLonglisted for the Man Booker PrizebrbNamed a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Amazon, iKirkus, The Washington Post, Newsday/i, and the Hudson Group/bbrbrA dazzling, richly moving new novel by the internationally celebrated author of iThe God of Small Things/i/bbr i /ibr iThe Ministry of Utmost Happiness /itakes 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.brbr 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.brbr 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.brbr As this ravishing, deeply humane novel braids these lives together, it reinvents what a novel can do and can be. iThe Ministry of Utmost Happiness/i demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy s storytelling gifts.