Vikram Seth

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Vikram Seth


Born
in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal, India
June 20, 1952

Website

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Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.

During the course of his doctorate studies at Stanford, he did his field work in China and translated Hindi and Chinese poetry into English. He returned to Delhi via Xinjiang and Tibet which led to a travel narrative From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983) which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse (1986) was his first novel describing the experiences of a group of friends who live in California. A Suitable Boy (1993), an epic of Indian life set in the 1950s, got him the WH Smith Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

His poetry includes The Humble Administrator's
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Average rating: 4.03 · 78,638 ratings · 5,855 reviews · 58 distinct worksSimilar authors
A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of...

4.11 avg rating — 50,556 ratings — published 1993 — 108 editions
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An Equal Music

3.80 avg rating — 11,233 ratings — published 1999 — 12 editions
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The Golden Gate

4.02 avg rating — 4,892 ratings — published 1986 — 37 editions
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Two Lives

3.68 avg rating — 3,786 ratings — published 2005 — 47 editions
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From Heaven Lake: Travels T...

4.03 avg rating — 2,150 ratings — published 1983 — 26 editions
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Beastly Tales from Here and...

4.09 avg rating — 1,033 ratings — published 1992 — 16 editions
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A Suitable Boy, Vol. 1

4.16 avg rating — 991 ratings — published 1993 — 20 editions
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All You Who Sleep Tonight: ...

4.13 avg rating — 718 ratings — published 1990 — 13 editions
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A Suitable Boy, Vol. 2

4.33 avg rating — 460 ratings — published 1995 — 19 editions
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A Suitable Boy, Vol. 3

4.34 avg rating — 437 ratings — published 1993 — 8 editions
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More books by Vikram Seth…
A Suitable Boy A Suitable Girl
(2 books)
by
4.11 avg rating — 50,686 ratings

Quotes by Vikram Seth  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“God save us from people who mean well.”
Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.”
Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.”
Vikram Seth, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet

Polls

2nd Quarter (Apr - June) Long Read 2017

 
  63 votes, 20.9%

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, 1320, 798 pages
 
  49 votes, 16.3%

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, 1991, 896 pages
 
  40 votes, 13.3%

Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922, 810 pages
 
  32 votes, 10.6%

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, 1021, 1182 pages
 
  31 votes, 10.3%

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, 1985, 945 pages
 
  28 votes, 9.3%

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, 1993, 1474 pages
 
  17 votes, 5.6%

The Winds of War by Herman Wouk, 1921, 896 pages
 
  15 votes, 5.0%

 
  10 votes, 3.3%

Weaveworld by Clive Barker, 1987, 721 pages
 
  9 votes, 3.0%

East Lynne by Mrs. Henry Wood, 1861, 694 pages
 
  7 votes, 2.3%

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