Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy's new novel will be published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in the UK in June 2017, her UK publisher Simon Prosser tweeted today. More details of the book, titled The Minister of Utmost Happiness, are awaited. Penguin Random House will publish the book in India.
'I am glad to report that the mad souls (even the wicked ones) in THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS have found a way into the world, and that I have found my publishers,' Roy said in a statement released to the press by her publishers.
Announcing big news this morning! We will publish ARUNDHATI ROY's new novel THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS in June pic.twitter.com/6trfJTv0Fd
— Simon Prosser (@HamishH1931) October 3, 2016
Roy, who won the Booker for her debut novel, The God of Small Things, in 1997 has not returned to a full-length work of fiction since then. Over the last two decades, she has written several volumes of non-fiction — essays, interviews, journalism — but not come up with another novel yet, frustrating her fans.
In 2013, Roy told The Hindu she was working on her second novel, but that she keeps "getting diverted from it" due to her myriad commitments. Apart from championing several social causes, including the opposition to building dams on river Narmada and nuclear proliferation, Roy has travelled far and wide, deep into areas of Naxalite unrest for instance, and reported extensively on the lives of people living in the margins.
A controversial figure for her upfront speeches, brutally honest journalism and outspoken demeanour, she was served a contempt notice by the Supreme Court of India. Two years ago, Roy met American whistleblower Edward Snowden, along with Hollywood personality John Cusack and activist Daniel Ellsberg, in Moscow. The result of their encounter was a book, Things That Can And Cannot Be Said.
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