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Vikram Seth (20 June 1952 -)
Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's
writer, biographer and memoirist.
Born and Early Life
Vikram Seth was born to Leila and Prem Seth in Calcutta (now Kolkata). His
family lived in many cities including the Bata Shoe Company town of
Batanagar, Danapur near Patna, and in London.
His younger brother, Shantum, leads Buddhist meditational tours. His
younger sister, Aradhana, is a film-maker married to an Austrian diplomat,
and has worked on Deepa Mehta's movies Earth and Fire. (Compare the
characters Haresh, Lata, Savita and two of the Chatterji siblings in A Suitable
Boy: Seth has been candid in acknowledging that many of his fictional
characters are drawn from life; he has said that only the dog Cuddles in A
Suitable Boy has his real name — "Because he can't sue". Justice Leila Seth
has said in her memoir On Balance that other characters in A Suitable Boy
are composites but Haresh is a portrait of her husband Prem.)
Seth spent part of his youth in London but returned to his homeland in 1957.
After receiving primary and commencing secondary education at the Doon
School in Dehradun in India, Seth returned to England to Tonbridge School.
From there, Seth studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, where he developed an interest in poetry and learned
Chinese. After leaving Oxford, Seth moved to California to work on a
graduate degree in economics at Stanford University.
Having lived in London for many years, Seth now maintains residences near
Salisbury, England, where he is a participant in local literary and cultural
events, having bought and renovated the house of the Anglican poet George
Herbert in 1996, and in Delhi, where he lives with his parents and keeps his
extensive library and papers.
Seth self-identifies as bisexual. In 2006, he became a leader of the campaign
against India's Section 377, a law against homosexuality.
Work Themes
A polyglot, Seth detailed in an interview (in the year 2005) in the Australian
magazine Good Weekend that he has studied several languages, including
Welsh, German and, later, French in addition to Mandarin, English (which he
describes as "my instrument" in answer to Indians who query his not writing
in his native Hindi), Urdu (which he reads and writes in Nasta’liq script), and
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Hindi, which he reads and writes in the Devanagari script. He plays the
Indian flute and the cello and sings German lieder, especially Schubert.
Business Acumen
Seth's former literary agent Giles Gordon recalled being interviewed by Seth
for the position:
"Vikram sat at one end of a long table and he began to grill us. It was
absolutely incredible. He wanted to know our literary tastes, our views on
poetry, our views on plays, which novelists we liked."
Seth later explained to Gordon that he had passed the interview not because
of commercial considerations, but because unlike the others he was the only
agent who seemed as interested in his poetry as in his other writing. Seth
followed what he has described as "the ludicrous advance for that book"
(£250,000 for A Suitable Boy) with £500,000 for An Equal Music and £1.4
million for Two Lives. He prepared an acrostic poem for his address at
Gordon's 2005 memorial service:
"Gone though you have, I heard your voice today.
I tried to make out what the words might mean,
Like something seen half-clearly on a screen:
Each savoured reference, each laughing bark,
Sage comment, bad pun, indiscreet remark.
Gone since you have, grief too in time will go,
Or share space with old joy; it must be so.
Rest then in peace, but spare us some elation.
Death cannot put down every conversation.
Over and out, as you once used to say?
Not on your life. You're on this line to stay."
Writing
Travel writing: From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet
His travel book From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet
(1983) was his first popular success and won the Thomas Cook Travel Book
Award. It offers insight to Seth as a person, who is candid about the reality
and effect of living abroad — though not in particular of being in diaspora —
a theme which arises in his poetry but nowhere in his fiction:
"Increasingly of late, and particularly when I drink, I find my thoughts drawn
into the past rather than impelled into the future. I recall drinking sherry in
California and dreaming of my earlier student days in England, where I ate
dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this
restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world
merely accumulating material for future nostalgias." (p.35)
Poetry
Seth has published five volumes of poetry. His first, Mappings (1980), was
originally privately published; it attracted little attention and indeed Philip
Larkin, to whom he sent it for comment, referred to it scornfully among his
intimates, though he offered Seth encouragement.
In 2009 Seth contributed four poems to Oxfam which are used as
introductions to each of the four collections of UK stories which form Oxfam's
'Ox-Tales' book project.
Novels in Prose
The "novel in verse": The Golden Gate (Hybrid)
The first of his novels, "The Golden Gate" (1986) is a novel in verse about
the lives of a number of young professionals in San Francisco. The novel is
written entirely in Onegin stanzas after the style Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene
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Onegin. Seth had encountered Charles Johnston's 1977 translation of it in a
Stanford second-hand bookstore and it changed the direction of his career,
shifting his focus from academic to literary work. The likelihood of
commercial success seemed highly doubtful — and the scepticism of friends
as to the novel's viability is facetiously quoted within the novel; but the verse
novel received wide acclaim (Gore Vidal dubbed it "The Great California
Novel") and achieved healthy sales. The novel contains a strong element of
affectionate satire, as with his subsequent novel, A Suitable Boy.
"The Golden Gate, an opera in two acts with music by Conrad Cummings and
libretto from the novel-in-verse by Vikram Seth adapted by the composer" is
currently (2010) in development by LivelyWorks and American Opera
Projects and receives a staged workshop production at the Rose Studio at
Lincoln Center in New York City in January 2010.
Works:
Novels
The Golden Gate (1986)
A Suitable Boy (1993)
An Equal Music (1999)
A Suitable Girl (2013)
Poetry
Mappings (1980)
The Humble Administrator's Garden (1985)
All You Who Sleep Tonight (1990)
Beastly Tales (1991)
Three Chinese Poets (1992)
The Frog and the Nightingale (1994)
Children's book
Beastly Tales (1991)
Libretto
Arion and the Dolphin (1994) for the English National Opera
The Traveller [2008] with composer Alec Roth. Premiere, Lichfield Festival
July 2008.
Non-fiction
From Heaven Lake (1983)
Two Lives (2005)
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Vikram Seth on love, loss and writer’s block
Intolerance is violence: Vikram Seth
30th-anniversary edition: Looking back at ‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth | WION
Author Vikram Seth on his three favourite books
Free Verse | Vikram Seth reads his poem 'Can't'
Humanity must trump religion when the two clash: Vikram Seth To NDTV
Full episode: Off The Cuff with Author Vikram Seth
Talking Heads with Vikram Seth and Justice Leila Seth (Aired: December 2005)
Rushdie row: Author Vikram Seth slams government
Celebrating 30 years of A Suitable Boy: Vikram Seth in Conversation with Shoma Chaudhary
EMRS TGT PGT English Classes |DSSSB/UP English by Aishwarya Puri | Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy
Beautiful People with Vikram Seth - 29 September 2012
Vikram Seth Biography and Important Works || EMRS TGT PGT ENGLISH ||
EMRS PGT ENGLISH 2023 || Indian Writing in English - Vikram Seth || आइये नई शुरुआत करते हैं
Vikram Seth Part 1 | The Pritish Nandy Show | Episode 6 | PNC
ख़ाली पेट ये चीज रोजाना खायें । ये 100 बीमारियाँ ठीक हो जायेंगी
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth REVIEW
Go East, Young Reader feat. Vikram Seth -- Part 1
Interview with Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth : Life and Works
Vikram Seth MCQs || EMRS TGT PGT ENGLISH ||
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth Hindi Summary || EMRS TGT PGT ENGLISH ||
I read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth so that you do not have to | Or maybe you do | Reading Vlog
Vikram Seth & His Work | English | Unacademy Live NTA UGC NET | Preeti Mandyal
Round and Round by Vikram Seth - Poem Recitation
NTA UGC NET:JRF | Concept Series | Paper II English Literature | Indian Poets | Vikram Seth
Evening Wheat by Vikram Setha UGTRB English #literature #ugtrb #english #vikram #vikramseth #pgtrb
Kathmandu By Vikram Seth ( Beehive - IX English CBSE)
The Stray Cat by Vikram Seth | Poetry Thursday
VIKRAM SETH BOOKS
Lecture 22: Vikram Seth
Vikram seth's Poem / Evening Wheat / in Tamil / UG TRB / Bharath Ravindran / Bharath Academy
Vikram Seth - All You Who Sleep Tonight - A poem for any lonely soul at Xmas to hold in warmth.
Enge Sellum Intha Pathai Video Song | Sethu Tamil Movie Songs | Vikram | எங்கே செல்லும் | Ilayaraja
Vikram Seth Biography in Modern Indian Writing
Sikkadha Sittondru Video Song |Sethu Tamil Movie Songs | Vikram | Sriman | Abitha| Pyramid Music
We are happy to be claimed but not disclaimed the way M F Husain was: Vikram Seth
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth Hindi Summary || EMRS TGT PGT ENGLISH ||
Vikram Seth Part 2 | The Pritish Nandy Show | Episode 6 | PNC
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth Hindi Summary || EMRS TGT PGT ENGLISH ||
मोटापा घटाने का सबसे ज्यादा कारगर तरीक़ा । 99% लोग नहीं जानते
Vikram Seth| Indian English Literature | A suitable boy| The Golden Gate
From Lyric Novel to Lyric Stage: Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate as Novel in Verse and Opera
Una's Lecture: A Conversation with Vikram Seth
LOL or Love OutLawed Part 1: Vikram Seth
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth Hindi Summary || EMRS TGT PGT ENGLISH ||
all you who sleep tonight // Vikram Seth
Exclusive: 'Will return award if Akademi remains mealy-mouthed'- Vikram Seth to NDTV
An evening with the Novelist and Poet Vikram Seth SIBF 2019
"The Golden Gate" By Vikram Seth