A dazzling, richly moving new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The God of the Small Things, which takes place on the Indian subcontinent - from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the New city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war. It is an aching love story and a decisive remonstration, a story told in a whisper, in a shout, through unsentimental tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Each of its characters is indelibly, tenderly rendered. His heroes are people who have been broken by the world and live in and then rescued, patched together by acts of love - and by hope.

The tale begins with Anjum - who used to be aftab - unrolling a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard she calls home. We encounter the odd, unforgettable Tilo and the men who loved her - including Musa, sweetheart and ex-sweetheart, lover and ex-lover; Their fates are as entwined as their arms used to be and always will be. We meet Tilo's landlord, an former suitor, now an intelligence officer. And then we meet the two Miss Jebeens: the first child born in Srinagar and buried in its overcrowded Martyrs' Graveyard; New Delhi is the second largest city in the world. As this ravishing, deeply humane novel braids, these lives together, it reinvents what a novel can do and can be. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness demonstrates on every page of the miracle of Arundhati Roy's storytelling gifts.