The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is Arundhati Roy's first novel since her famed debut 20 years ago with Booker Prize winner The God of Small Things. In an interview with NDTV at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, Ms Roy noted the two decade gap between her two books was not intentional but she did not want to feel forced to write. "Fiction visited me again, the characters in the book showed up at my doorstep and just would not go away," she said. The book, set mainly in old Delhi and Kashmir, focuses mainly on two central characters Anjum, a Muslim transgender and Tilo, a fiercely independent woman who challenges long held social and political norms. But in many ways it is a messy and monumental take on modern India, interspersing the narrative with references to Hindu Nationalism, Kashmir separatism and caste politics, "I do not look at these as issues, it is the air we breathe in India. What is happening in Kashmir, to caste, what is going on politically is the air we breathe," Ms Roy tells NDTV.

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