{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,30]],"date-time":"2026-03-30T21:31:47Z","timestamp":1774906307830,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"SAGE Publications","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,22]],"date-time":"2019-01-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1548115200000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/page\/policies\/text-and-data-mining-license"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["journals.sagepub.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["The Journal of Commonwealth Literature"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,3]]},"abstract":"<jats:p> Arundhati Roy\u2019s second and latest novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness \u2014 which took her 10 years to write \u2014 is crammed full of misfits and outsiders, the flotsam and jetsam of India\u2019s complex, stratified society. The novel is inhabited by cohorts of others: hijras, political rebels, the poor, women who will not \u201cknow their place\u201d, and abandoned baby girls. The narrative of Roy\u2019s latest political romance shows these others carving out new spaces for themselves, defying convention, trying possible new lives, and testing out new roles. This article aims to look at the texture of romance in Roy\u2019s novels. Set within the narrative of Roy\u2019s romance with India\u2019s others, the article focuses on the Tilo\u2013Musa romance in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and compares it with the Ammu\u2013Velutha romance in the author\u2019s first novel, The God of Small Things, published in 1997. Romance in Roy\u2019s novels serves multiple purposes, as this article argues and unpacks. Mapping out the patterns of romance which Roy creates in both her novels, this analysis employs the trope of romance as a lens through which to offer a postcolonial reading of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which interpenetrates intimacy and desire and the political. Deconstructing the (remarkably similar) romances at the heart of both of Roy\u2019s novels reveals that her romances may not just be her rebuttal to India\u2019s wrongs, but may even constitute a form of political rescue. We conclude that although Roy is purposeful in identifying and avoiding re-orientalist representations, her rejection of abjection and victimhood, and her overt celebration of larger-than-life others, may have subverted the inferiorizing of the other, without, however, decreasing the process of othering. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/0021989418820701","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,22]],"date-time":"2019-01-22T19:14:36Z","timestamp":1548184476000},"page":"102-117","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":12,"title":["Romancing the other: Arundhati Roy\u2019s <i>The Ministry of Utmost Happiness<\/i>"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"57","author":[{"given":"Lisa","family":"Lau","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Keele University, UK"}]},{"given":"Ana Cristina","family":"Mendes","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Portugal"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-0021989418820701","unstructured":"Akbar A (2017) The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy \u2014 review. 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ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature"},{"key":"bibr5-0021989418820701","volume-title":"The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess","author":"Brooks P","year":"1995"},{"key":"bibr6-0021989418820701","unstructured":"Clark A (2017) The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy review \u2014 a patchwork of narratives. The Observer, 11 June. Available at: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2017\/jun\/11\/ministry-utmost-happiness-arundhati-roy-review (accessed 10 December 2018)."},{"key":"bibr7-0021989418820701","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1057\/9781137371874"},{"key":"bibr8-0021989418820701","unstructured":"Felicelli A (2017) Outside language and power: The mastery of Arundhati Roy\u2019s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Los Angeles Review of Books, 21 June. 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