Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta, the son of a shoe company executive and a judge, and educated in India, Oxford University and Stanford University in California. He later studied at Nanking University in China and used his subsequent experiences during a hitchhiking trip from China through Nepal to India to write an award-winning travelogue, From Heaven Lake (1983).Seth's first novel, The Golden Gate (1986), amazed critics with its extraordinary form: it is composed entirely in metred, rhyming 14-line stanzas apparently inspired by a 19th-century translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Within this difficult structure, Seth developed, to remarkably readable effect, a satirical romance describing the lives and preoccupations of a group of young professionals in San Francisco.
Seth's second novel, A Suitable Boy (1993), was even more impressive, at least in terms of length. One critic has described it as "three and a half pounds of perfection," while others have compared it to Tolstoy, Balzac, George Eliot and Charles Dickens. Not only its length but its compelling narrative force, strong characterisation and ingeniously interrelated plotting give weight to these judgments. The book describes the efforts of Rupa Mehra, a matriarchal Indian mother, to find a suitable match for her daughter, Lata.
Set against a background of the Hindu/Muslim conflict that pervaded post-Independence India, the novel tells how Lata tries to reconcile her mother's wishes with her own love for a Muslim boy. Seth sees his book as, in part, a plea for religious tolerance. "These people have hijacked what it means to be Hindu," he says. "It's tolerance, understanding - not just trying to bash your neighbour over the head because he's Muslim".
Many critics and readers were amazed when A Suitable Boy was not even short-listed for the 1993 Booker Prize. In 1999, Seth's third novel was published, An Equal Music, which explores the resuscitation of a long-dead love and the interaction of a group of musicians. Described as "an exquisite miniature", it has not evoked the critical acclaim of his earlier work, but nevertheless marks yet another new departure, in style and subject matter, for this multi-faceted and multi-talented writer.
