![]() ![]() "Data," in this sense, is the expression of a social sensibility that stems from the trauma of loss and the absurdity of geopolitics post-9/11-and, in Roy's vision, how this absurdity plays out in the context of India under Narendra Modi. What comes to prominence in the later novel is a concern with the individual subject as a site of surveillance, rumors, reports, and (dis)information-what, following the novel itself, we can collectively call "data"-and a corresponding novel form which relies on textual bricolage and narrative fragmentation. Despite some thematic continuities between the two novels, there are also significant narrative differences that can be attributed to Roy's evolving socio-political consciousness (elaborated in her large body of essays and commentaries), but also to what might be seen as a changing view of humanity and human society post-9/11. Arundhati Roy's second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was published in 2017, twenty years after the appearance of her first novel, The God of Small Things. ![]()
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