bio-sketch on vikram seth

Vikram Seth,(bornJune 20, 1952,Calcutta,India),Indian poet, novelist, and travel writer known for hisversenovelThe Golden Gate(1986) and his epic novelA Suitable Boy(1993).

The son of a judge and a businessman, Seth was raised inLondonand India. He attended exclusive Indian schools and then graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford (B.A., 1975). He received a masters degree in economics fromStanford Universityin 1978 and later studied at Nanking (China) University. In 1987 he returned to India to live with his family in New Delhi.

Although Seths first volume ofpoetry,Mappings, was published in 1980, he did not attract critical attention until the publication of his humorous travelogueFrom Heaven Lake(1983), the story of his journey hitchhiking from Nanking to NewDelhivia Tibet. The poetic craft ofThe Humble Administrators Garden(1985) foreshadows the polish ofThe Golden Gate, a novel of the popular culture of CaliforniasSilicon Valley, written entirely in metred, rhyming 14-line stanzas and based on Charles Johnstons translation ofAleksandr PushkinsEugene Onegin. In the work Seth successfully harnesses contemporary situations to a demanding 19th-century form; the young professional characters discuss nuclear weapons, Roman Catholic teachings on homosexuality, and the perils of overwork. Seth continued to use controlled poetic form in his 1990 collectionAll You Who Sleep Tonight, and he also wrote the 10 stories ofBeastly Tales from Here and There(1992) in tetrametre couplets. A collection entitledThe Poems, 19811994was published in 1995. He turned to prose, however, inA Suitable Boy, which depicts relations between four Indian families. The books compelling narrative and great length invited critical comparisons toLeo Tolstoy,Marcel Proust,James Joyce,Honoré de Balzac, andCharles Dickens. His next novel,An Equal Music(1999), is a love story set in the world of professional musicians.