A Suitable Boy

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: the tale of Lata's - and her mother’s - attempts to find a suitable boy for Lata, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in the early 1950s in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multi-ethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence. An international bestseller: now a major TV series Reviews A magnificent display of artistic control. . . . A Suitable Boy is a page-turner . . . that pays the reader back and richly. - Los Angeles Times Multiply Middlemarch times Bleak House and you come out with A Suitable Boy, bursting with plot, characters, coincidences, adventures, calamities, excitements, and spectacles. - Washington Post Book World Awe . . . is what Seth’s labor inspires in the reader. In the end it is as if one had listened to a raag played by a musician with skill, dexterity, and charm. - The New York Review of Books A huge, fulsome novel . . . [with] surprising depths. . . . What makes the book special is the wit and whimsy that inform its pages. - Chicago Tribune An immensely enjoyably 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 We should be grateful for this panoramic sweep which revives in our memory a period when a whole way of life came to an end. . . . [Seth’s] sure touch is really quite incredible. - The Hindu This novel, so vast and so amiably peopled, is a long, sweet, sleepless pilgrimage to life. .. . . . Such writing reminds us that there are secrets beyond technique, beyond even style, which have to do with a quality of soul on the part of the writer, a giving of oneself. . . . - The Guardian The greatness of the novel, its unassailable truthfulness, owes less to research than to imagination, an instinctive knowledge of the human heart. . . . As with all the best books, one feels only dismay when the pages on the right of the tome start thinning out. - The 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 – perhaps even the book to restore the serious reading public’s faith in the contemporary novel. . . . You should make time for it. It will keep you company for the rest of your life. - The Times A phenomenon, a prodigy, a marvel of 19th century storytelling in the language of today. . . . - Evening Standard Conceived on the grand scale of the great 19th century novels, A Suitable Boy grows to match them in breadth and depth. . . . [A] massive and magnificent book. - Sunday Times About the Author Vikram Seth was born in Kolkata, India. He trained as an economist and has lived for several years each in England, California, and China. He is the author of three novels: The Golden Gate, An Equal Music, and A Suitable Boy, one of the most beloved and widely read books of recent times. He has published several books of poetry, including Beastly Tales, a book of animal fables for children; translations from three Tang dynasty poets; and an opera libretto. He has also written two highly regarded works of non-fiction, From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet; and Two Lives, a memoir of his Indian great-uncle and his German great-aunt. He is presently at work on A Suitable Girl. Read more