A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Set in post-independence India, the novel follows for eighteen months or so four linked families in Calcutta, the province of Purva Pradesh and its capital Brahmpur, and the cities–Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow—trawled by the heroine’s mother in her search for a “suitable boy”… But the greatness of the novel, its unassailable truthfulness, owes less to research than to imagination, an instinctive knowledge of the human heart – with all its varieties of kindness and cruelty, its capacity for hurt… As with all the best books, one feels only dismay when the pages on the right of the tome start thinning out.’ —The Observer

‘So vast and so amicably peopled, (A Suitable Boy) is a long, sweet, sleepless pilgrimage to life. Rich and epical, Suitable Boy is nonetheless strikingly unpretentious… In 1,400 pages (the novel) covers India like a sun, warming a whole country in its historical rays… It is almost impossible to imagine an unswayed reader.’ —The Guardian

‘Not merely one of the longest novels in English; it may also prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of this century.’ —The Times

‘A phenomenon, a prodigy, a marvel of 19th century storytelling in the language of today… It is hard to believe that Seth is only one man. He writes with the omniscience and authority of a large, orderly committee of experts on Indian politics, law, medicine, crowd psychology, urban and rural social customs, dress, cuisine, horticulture, funerary rites, cricket and even the technicalities of shoe manufacture.’ —Evening Standard

‘Puts a subcontinent between hard covers… hundreds of people stream into view and are illuminated by the brilliant, warm lucidity of Vikram Seth’s regard… Conceived on the grand scale of the great 19th century novels—War and Peace, Middlemarch—A Suitable Boy grows to match them in its breadth and depth… (A) massive and magnificent book.’ —The Sunday Times

‘We should be grateful for this panoramic sweep which revives in our memory a period when a whole way of life came to an end…(Seth’s) sure touch is really quite incredible, his characters are consistent from beginning to end.’ —The Hindu

‘A quietly monumental novel…(Seth) has given us that unlikeliest of hybrids, a modest tour de force.’ —Times Literary Supplement