A Suitable Boy

Vikram Seth's novel is at its core a love story, the tale of Lata - and her mother's attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal.

Set in post-Independence India and involving the lives of four large families and those who orbit them, it is also a vast panoramic exploration of a whole continent at a crucial hour as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great General Election and the chance to map its own destiny.

“Twentieth anniversary-edition of Seth's masterly hymn to life and love set against the backdrop of an independent India.”

The best writer of his generation The Times
This novel, so vast and so amiably peopled, is a long, sweet, sleepless pilgrimage to life . . . His novel deserves thousands of long marriages and suitable readers Guardian
No one, surely, could wish this novel shorter . . . the greatness of the novel, its unassailable truthfulness, owes less to research than to imagination, an instinctive knowledge of the human heart Observer
Not merely one of the longest novels in English; it may also prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of [the twentieth] century The TImes
A quietly monumental novel . . . [Seth] has given that unlikeliest of hybrids, a modest tour de force TLS
An immensely enjoyable novel which describes with unhurried pace the panorama of India . . . Everything appears familiar to us, yet in fact it is newly minted by a master artist Hindustan Times
Conceived on a grand scale of the great 19th century novels - War and Peace, Middlemarch - A Suitable Boy grows to match them in breadth and depth . . . [A] massive and magnificent book Sunday Times
THE OBSERVER
A phenomenon, a prodigy, a marvel of 19th century storytelling in the language of today . . . It is hard to believe that Seth is only one man. He writes with the omniscience and authority of a large, orderly committee of experts on Indian politics, law, medicine, crowd psychology, urban and rural social customs, dress, cuisine, horticulture, funerary rites, cricket and even the technicalities of shoe manufacture Evening Standard

Vikram Seth was born in 1952. He trained as an economist and has lived for several years each in England, California, China and India. He is the author of A Suitable Boy, which was an international number one bestseller, An Equal Music and several other novels. He has also written five volumes of poetry including Beastly Tales.

Vikram Seth's novel is at its core a love story, the tale of Lata - and her mother's attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal.Set in post-Independence India and involving the lives of four large families and those who orbit them, it is also a vast panoramic exploration of a whole continent at a crucial hour as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great General Election and the chance to map its own destiny.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.