Fantasy and History in Postcolonial India: the Case of Arundhati Roy’s Anti-Global Novel

Even if Roy employs some magic realist elements drawn upon her Booker-winning debut novel, The God of Small Things (1997), the use of fantasy and realism in her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), is less concerned with an aesthetic function than with anti-global one. In the novel, images of vulnerability affect individuals and environments alike, promoting not only a poetic of loss but also a radical critique of such social questions as anti-globalisation, environmentalism, anti-nuclear campaigns and land rights in Kashmir. This article then explores the juxtaposition of Bharati fantasy and historical realism in Roy’s last novel and it investigates the ways in which a hybrid narrative format manages to convey a complex and rich plot of contemporary India, where gender questions, caste discriminations, wounded landscapes and religious conflicts animate a tale of decay and hope. By resorting to Hindu epics, on the one hand, and to the intellectual activism typical of her non-fiction works, on the other, Roy issues both a warning and an invitation to take into account the contradictions of present-day postcolonial India.