Wow. Just wow. We were lucky enough to nab some time with the inimitable Arundhati Roy for her new novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness—so we took her out to the roof of our flagship shop and listened to her read…
Twenty years on from her dazzling debut novel, The God of Small Things—which won the Booker Prize in 1997—Hamish Hamilton have published the kaleidoscopic, sprawling Ministry of Utmost Happiness. It’s sure to be one of the biggest books of the year, if not the decade, and one that many of us here at Foyles have already fallen in love with.
Here the author reads from the opening of the book—which, incidentally, you can buy in our signed exclusive edition while stocks last. With specially designed endpapers, a silver-grey ribbon marker, an embossed stamp and, of course, the author’s signature, it’s the best way to own this landmark book. Well, we think so anyway…
Arundhati Roy in conversation with Anthony Arnove. This event is part of the Lannan Foundation’s In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom series. You can find more videos at podcast.lannan.org
Arundhati Roy shot to fame when she won the Man Booker Prize in 1997 for her debut novel, The God of Small Things. Twenty years later her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, finally hits the shelves. We got the chance to talk to her about early success, what motivates her to write and why the caste system that dominates Indian culture is just one of the ways in which labels can control and restrict us.
The School of Writing (http://www.newschool.edu/writing) at The New School (http://www.newschool.edu) and Haymarket Books (http://www.haymarketbooks.org) present a reading and conversation with Siddhartha Deb, and acclaimed novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy on the occasion of the launch of her new book Capitalism: A Ghost Story (Haymarket Books).
From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.
Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives. She has worked as a film designer and screenplay writer in India. Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. She has also written several non-fiction books, including The Cost of Living, Power Politics, War Talk, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, and Public Power in the Age of Empire. Roy was featured in the BBC television documentary Dam/age, which is about the struggle against big dams in India. A collection of interviews with Arundhati Roy by David Barsamian was published as The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile. She is a contributor to the Verso anthology Kashmir: The Case for Freedom. Her newest books are Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers and Capitalism: A Ghost Story, published by Haymarket Books, and Walking with the Comrades, published by Penguin. Roy is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize.
Siddhartha Deb, who teaches creative writing at The New School, is the author of two novels: The Point of Return, which was a 2003 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and An Outline of the Republic. His reviews and journalism have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, New Statesman, n+1, and The Times Literary Supplement. He is also the author of The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India.
John L. Tishman Auditorium (U100), University Center
Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 7:00 pm
https://democracynow.org – Today we spend the hour with the acclaimed Indian writer Arundhati Roy. It has been 20 years since her debut novel, “The God of Small Things,” made her a literary sensation. While the book won the Booker Prize and became an international best-seller, selling over 6 million copies, Roy soon turned away from fiction. Now, two decades later, Roy has returned to fiction and has just published her second novel, “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.”
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