Arundhati Roy on Indian Democracy in Peril

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Soon to speak in New Zealand, Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy discusses her complex relationship with her native India with Sally Blundell.

In a neglected graveyard in Old Delhi, Anjum, a Muslim hijra, or transgender woman, sets up a makeshift home. Others join her – untouchables, Muslim converts, addicts, the impoverished and the abandoned drawn together in a multi-faith caste-less sanctuary, a place of freedom, equity and acceptance. “And humour!” says author Arundhati Roy of her 2017 novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a bounteous, baggy, densely populated story unfolding from the slums of Delhi to the disputed valleys of Kashmir. “If you think about who lives there, and who dies there, it is a revolution!”