Arundhati Roy: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Arundhati Roy takes on the vast world of contemporary India – its violence, its outsiders, its trans-genders, radicals, dreamers and idlers. Trained as an architect, Roy reveals that she structured her novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Knopf) like an Indian metropolis where ancient neighborhoods collide with modern urban planning. As the architecture of the novel branches out and grows, stories in the background suddenly are brought into the foreground. Roy insists that our lives actually unfold with similar reversals.