Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth, (born June 20, 1952, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India), Indian poet, novelist, and travel writer known for his verse novel The Golden Gate (1986) and his epic novel A Suitable Boy (1993).

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The son of a judge and a businessman, Seth was raised in London and India. He attended exclusive Indian schools and then graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford (B.A., 1975). He received a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University in the U.S. in 1978 and later studied at Nanjing University in China.

 

In 1987 he returned to India to live with his family in New Delhi. He turned to prose in A Suitable Boy, which depicts relations between four Indian families. The book’s compelling narrative and great length invited critical comparisons to Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Honoré de Balzac, and Charles Dickens. His next novel, An Equal Music (1999), is a love story set in the world of professional musicians.

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Opportunity knocks at the least expected time. Unsuccessfully pursuing a PhD in Economics, Vikram  was in book store one day when he came across a novel written by a Russian author Pushkin.

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Vikram realized with time what his true calling was and wrote his first novel in rhythmic verse-"The golden gate". Today Vikram Seth is one of the best known Indian writers in English.