Vikram Seth





Vikram Seth

Author profile


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

gender
male

genre


About this author

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...more


Average rating: 3.97 · 26,694 ratings · 1,782 reviews · 24 distinct works · Similar authors
A Suitable Boy
4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 17,473 ratings — published 1993 — 40 editions
An Equal Music
3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 avg rating — 4,197 ratings — published 1999 — 27 editions
The Golden Gate
4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 avg rating — 1,874 ratings — published 1986 — 12 editions
Two Lives
3.55 of 5 stars 3.55 avg rating — 1,523 ratings — published 2005 — 21 editions
From Heaven Lake: Travels T...
3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 620 ratings — published 1983 — 11 editions
Beastly Tales From Here And...
3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 302 ratings — published 1991 — 9 editions
All You Who Sleep Tonight: ...
4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 196 ratings — published 1990 — 5 editions
Suitable Boy (V. 1)
4.28 of 5 stars 4.28 avg rating — 86 ratings3 editions
Three Chinese Poets
3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 avg rating — 93 ratings6 editions
Mappings
3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 avg rating — 45 ratings — published 1980 — 2 editions
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“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

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

“I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.”
Vikram Seth

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