The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , the much awaited second work of fiction by Booker Prize winning Indian writer Arundhati Roy, made its State-level début here on Tuesday.
Releasing the book, novelist K.R. Meera said it was a moment of utmost happiness and pride for her that she could be part of this occasion when the most awaited fiction of the past two decades was being released in the home state of the writer. “Unlike The God of Small Things, which was a fictional reconstruction of her personal world, the second one appears to be the abstraction of the political compassion attained during the past two decades of political activism when she had turned from fiction,” she said.
And unlike the world of the little village in The God of Small Things , her latest work of fiction paints a vast canvas extending from Old Delhi to Kashmir and documents the history of the past two years of India, she said. Incidentally, her work Hangwoman was released by Ms. Roy, she said.
Receiving the book, G.R. Indugopan, writer and journalist, pointed out that Ms. Roy who had strong Malayali moorings could take the story of the little village to the world. And she has now attained a pan-Indian or pan-world standing, he said
Ravi Deecee, CEO, DC Books, spoke on the occasion. The book is published in India by Penguin Random House.
