Seth A Suitable Boy

About A Suitable Boy

Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (1993) is one of the longest novels in the English language and one of the most beloved — a vast, warm chronicle of post-independence India in 1951 as Mrs. Rupa Mehra searches for a husband for her youngest daughter Lata across four interconnected families in the fictional city of Brahmpur. At 1,349 pages, it encompasses Hindu-Muslim relations, land reform, the first national elections, romantic love in three different registers, and the full texture of early Indian democracy, all rendered with Tolstoyan comprehensiveness and unrelenting warmth. Seth wrote it over ten years and produced one of the few genuinely long novels that readers routinely describe as impossible to put down. A companion novel, A Suitable Girl, has been in preparation for many years.