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Vikram Seth

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Una's Lecture: A Conversation with Vikram Seth
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Vikram Seth


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

Website

Genre
Literature & Fiction, Biographies & Memoirs, Poetry


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

Combine Editions

Average rating: 4.03 · 77,642 ratings · 5,719 reviews · 60 distinct works • Similar authors
A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of...
4.11 avg rating — 49,938 ratings — published 1993
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An Equal Music
3.80 avg rating — 11,089 ratings — published 1999 — 75 editions
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The Golden Gate
4.02 avg rating — 4,852 ratings — published 1986 — 26 editions
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Two Lives
3.68 avg rating — 3,771 ratings — published 2005 — 48 editions
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From Heaven Lake: Travels T...
4.04 avg rating — 2,112 ratings — published 1983 — 40 editions
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Beastly Tales from Here and...
4.09 avg rating — 1,017 ratings — published 1992 — 23 editions
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A Suitable Boy, Vol. 1
4.16 avg rating — 960 ratings — published 1993 — 19 editions
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All You Who Sleep Tonight: ...
4.13 avg rating — 705 ratings — published 1990 — 13 editions
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A Suitable Boy, Vol. 3
4.34 avg rating — 422 ratings — published 1993 — 8 editions
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A Suitable Boy, Vol. 2
4.32 avg rating — 410 ratings — published 1995 — 18 editions
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More books by Vikram Seth…

Series by Vikram Seth

A Suitable Boy A Suitable Girl
(2 books)
by
4.11 avg rating — 50,060 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
tags: god, good-intentions, humanity, religion
1985 likes
Like

“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
tags: reading
265 likes
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“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
tags: future-nostalgias, nostalgia
161 likes
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Polls

2017 4th Quarter Long Read

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, 672 pages, 1859
 
  45 votes, 14.8%

The Arabian Nights, 1049 pages, 800
 
  41 votes, 13.4%

East of Eden by John Steinbeck. 601 pages, 1952
 
  38 votes, 12.5%

 
  22 votes, 7.2%

The Red and the Black by Stendhal, 608 pages, 1830
 
  21 votes, 6.9%

 
  19 votes, 6.2%

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, 909 pages, 1353
 
  16 votes, 5.2%

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, 1168 pages, 1957
 
  16 votes, 5.2%

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, 1079 pages, 1966
 
  15 votes, 4.9%

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, 1182 pages, 1008
 
  13 votes, 4.3%

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, 801 pages, 1865
 
  12 votes, 3.9%

 
  10 votes, 3.3%

 
  9 votes, 3.0%

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, 1474 pages, 1993
 
  8 votes, 2.6%

Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey, 640 pages, 1964
 
  8 votes, 2.6%

Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo, 1424 pages, 1978
 
  6 votes, 2.0%

The Winds of War by Herman Wouk, 896 pages, 1971
 
  4 votes, 1.3%

Raintree County by Ross Lockridge Jr., 1088 pages, 1948
 
  2 votes, 0.7%

305 total votes
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