A Suitable Boy boasts a cast of over 100 characters, each with their own distinct personality and role in the story. Vikram Seth masterfully weaves their lives together, creating an intricate tapestry of relationships. [1]
Vikram Seth was born on 20 June 1952 in Calcutta. He is best known for his second novel, A Suitable Boy (1993). His father, Prem Nath Seth, was an executive of the Bata India Limited shoe company, and his mother, Leila Seth, a barrister by training, became the first female judge of the Delhi High Court as well as the first woman to become Chief Justice of a state High Court. She was the Chief Justice of Shimla High Court.
A Suitable Boy is an acclaimed epic of Indian life and it won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book). Set in India in the early 1950s, it is the story of a young girl, Lata, and her search for a husband.
When A Suitable Boy was published, it took the world by storm. It remains one of the longest novels ever to be published in a single volume (at nearly one and a half thousand pages) and it has a huge cast of characters, so can appear to many to be a daunting read. Vikram Seth has been compared with Tolstoy and to George Eliot, and his book has been listed as one of the ‘all-time great Asian novels’.
Seth has published six books of poetry and three novels. His first novel, The Golden Gate (1986), describes the experiences of a group of friends living in California, and his third book, An Equal Music (1999), is the story of a violinist haunted by the memory of a former lover.
Having lived in London for many years, Seth now maintains residences near Salisbury, England, where he is a participant in local literary and cultural events, having bought and renovated the house of the Anglican poet George Herbert in 1996, and in Delhi, where he keeps his extensive library and papers.