The novel follows Anjum, a hijra who makes a home in a Delhi graveyard, and Tilo, a woman entangled with men on opposing sides of the Kashmir conflict, weaving together their stories with those of the Kashmiri insurgency, Gujarat's riots, and Delhi's protest movements.
Books mentioned in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (6)
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin: “the publisher is grateful for permission to reproduce an extract from The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin”
Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam: epigraph taken from Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam, translated by Max Hayward
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet: epigraph taken from Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet, translated by Bernard Frechtman
The Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali: epigraph 'Muharram in Srinagar, 1992', from The Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali
Straw Dogs by John Gray: “the passage which the weevil professor reads aloud to his weevil class is adapted from Straw Dogs by John Gray”
The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda: epigraph fragment from LXVI from Libro de las Preguntas / The Book of Questions, translated by William O'Daly
Books that mention The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (1)
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy: “How else can it be that like the characters in my second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, I, too, am now the caretaker of a sort of grave...”