The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Couverture souple

“A great tempest of a novel. . . . Will leave you awed.” —The Washington Post

“Staggeringly beautiful. . . . Once a decade, if we are lucky, a novel emerges from the cinder pit of living that asks the urgent question of our global era. . . . Roy’s novel is this decade’s ecstatic and necessary answer.” —The Boston Globe
 
“Powerful and moving. . . . Infused with so much passion—political, social, emotional—that it vibrates. It may leave you shaking, too.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Roy writes with astonishing vividness.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“Magisterial. . . . The Ministry of Utmost Happiness works its empathetic magic upon a breathtakingly broad slate.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“A fiercely unforgettable novel about gender, terrorism, Indian’s caste system, corruption and politics. . . . A love story with characters so heartbreaking and compelling they sear themselves into the reader’s brain.” —USA Today

“Thrilling. . . . [Roy’s] luminous passages span eras and regions of the Indian subcontinent and artfully weave the stories of several characters into a triumphant symphony.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“A lustrously braided and populated tale.” —Vanity Fair

“Roy’s second novel proves as remarkable as her first. . . . Through [the characters’] archetypal interactions, juxtaposed with Roy’s glorious social details, you will have been granted a powerful sense of their world, of the complexity, energy and diversity of contemporary India.” —Financial Times

“Epic in scale, but intimately human in its concerns, the long-awaited story dazzles with its kaleidoscopic narrative approach and unforgettable characters.” —Elle

“The novel weaves the personal and the political with powerful results. . . . Roy turns her lens outward to examine India’s rich but violent history and the catastrophic lingering effects of Partition.” —Esquire

“A riotous carnival, as wryly funny and irreverent as its author.” —The Guardian

“A deeply rewarding work. . . . Images in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness . . . wedge themselves in the mind like memories of lived experience.” —Slate

“Complex and ambitious. . . . A deep and richly satisfying read.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“One of the best protest novels ever written. . . . Roy elucidates the conversation around power and diversity in a way that no other author does.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“A rich, romantic, and sprawling tale. . . . You’re guaranteed to fall in love with the characters and be swept up by the writing.” —Glamour

“Once again, Roy demonstrates her mastery of exquisite prose, visionary intelligence and a bent for epic storytelling.” —The Seattle Times

“Haunting. . . . A passionate political masterpiece delivered in an enchanting array of narrative styles and voices.” —The Times Literary Supplement

“Stunning. . . . Roy’s lyrical sentences, and the ferocity of her narrative, are a wonder to behold.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

She was the fourth of five children, born on a cold January night, by lamplight (power cut), in Shahjahanabad, the walled city of Delhi. Ahlam Baji, the midwife who delivered her and put her in her mother’s arms wrapped in two shawls, said, “It’s a boy.” Given the circumstances, her error was understandable.

A month into her first pregnancy Jahanara Begum and her husband decided that if their baby was a boy they would name him Aftab. Their first three children were girls. They had been waiting for their Aftab for six years. The night he was born was the happiest of Jahanara Begum’s life.

The next morning, when the sun was up and the room nice and warm, she unswaddled little Aftab. She explored his tiny body—eyes nose head neck armpits fingers toes—with sated, unhurried delight. That was when she discovered, nestling underneath his boy-parts, a small, unformed, but undoubtedly girl-part.

Is it possible for a mother to be terrified of her own baby? Jahanara Begum was. Her first reaction was to feel her heart constrict and her bones turn to ash. Her second reaction was to take another look to make sure she was not mistaken. Her third reaction was to recoil from what she had created while her bowels convulsed and a thin stream of shit ran down her legs. Her fourth reaction was to contemplate killing herself and her child. Her fifth reaction was to pick her baby up and hold him close while she fell through a crack between the world she knew and worlds she did not know existed. There, in the abyss, spinning through the darkness, everything she had been sure of until then, every single thing, from the smallest to the biggest, ceased to make sense to her. In Urdu, the only language she knew, all things, not just living things but all things—carpets, clothes, books, pens, musical instruments—had a gender. Everything was either masculine or feminine, man or woman. Everything except her baby. Yes of course she knew there was a word for those like him—Hijra. Two words actually, Hijra and Kinnar. But two words do not make a language.

Was it possible to live outside language? Naturally this question did not address itself to her in words, or as a single lucid sentence. It addressed itself to her as a soundless, embryonic howl.