Mapped
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
Roy's Kerala is a green, waterlogged world of rubber and pepper, of a pickle factory and a river that turns from playground to grave. The map gathers around Ayemenem, a real village on the Meenachal near Kottayam, then reaches west to the backwaters and north to Cochin, where the family's day at the cinema sets the tragedy moving.
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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Arundhati Roy
Roy's sprawling novel gathers India's outcasts around Anjum, a hijra who leaves her communal household to make a home, and a guesthouse, in an Old Delhi graveyard, while the war in Kashmir sends its wounded into the story. Delhi is the heart: the House of Dreams in the old city, the graveyard where Anjum builds her Jannat Guest House, the protest ground of Jantar Mantar, and the great Jama Masjid; the Kashmir Valley runs alongside as the wound outside the setting.
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