Who is the author of 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'?

Arundhati Roy, born in 1961 in Shillong, is one of India's best-known writers and an outspoken social activist. She grew up in Aymanam, in Kerala, and trained as an architect in Delhi.

"The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" was published in 2017. It was her second novel, published twenty years after her first. The book follows several characters whose lives cross in Delhi and Kashmir. Among them are Anjum, a hijra (transgender woman) who builds a guest house in an old graveyard in Delhi, and Tilottama, a woman connected with the conflict in Kashmir. Through their stories, the novel deals with caste, religious violence, the Kashmir conflict, the rights of marginalised people and life in modern India. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017.

Her first novel, "The God of Small Things" (1997), is set in Kerala and tells the story of the twins Estha and Rahel. It won the Booker Prize in 1997, making her the first Indian woman (and the first non-expatriate Indian) to win the award. Between her two novels, she wrote many non-fiction essays on issues such as nuclear weapons, big dams (the Narmada Bachao Andolan), globalisation and democracy, collected in books such as "The Algebra of Infinite Justice" and "Azadi" (2020). She won the PEN Pinter Prize in 2024. Her memoir, "Mother Mary Comes to Me", was published in 2025.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize in 2006 for "The Inheritance of Loss".
• ✗Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for "Interpreter of Maladies" (1999) and wrote "The Namesake" and "The Lowland".
• ✗Anita Desai, Kiran Desai's mother, wrote "Clear Light of Day" and "Fire on the Mountain".