A Suitable Boy

A Suitable Boy: A Novel

First US edition
Author Vikram Seth
Country India
Language English
Set in Gangetic Plain, 1951–52
Publisher HarperCollins (US)
Phoenix House (UK)
Little, Brown (Canada)
Publication date
 May 1993
Media type Print (hardback)
Pages 1,349
ISBN 0-06-017012-3
OCLC 27013350
823 20
LC Class PR9499.3.S38 S83 1993
Followed by A Suitable Girl

A Suitable Boy is a novel by Vikram Seth, published in 1993. At 1,349 pages (1,488 pages softcover) and 591,552 words, the book is one of the longest novels ever published in a single volume in the English language.[1][2][3] A sequel, to be called A Suitable Girl, is due for publication in 2017.[4]

Plot summary

A Suitable Boy is set in a newly post-independence, post-partition India. The novel follows the story of four families over a period of 18 months, and centres on Mrs. Rupa Mehra's efforts to arrange the marriage of her younger daughter, Lata, to a "suitable boy". Lata is a 19-year-old university student who refuses to be influenced by her domineering mother or opinionated brother, Arun. Her story revolves around the choice she is forced to make between her suitors Kabir, Haresh, and Amit.

It begins in the fictional town of Brahmpur, located on the Ganges between Banares and Patna. Brahmpur, along with Calcutta, Delhi, Kanpur and other Indian cities, forms a colourful backdrop for the emerging stories.

...reviewers and critics alike have frequently compared it to Tolstoy's War and Peace, as well as to fictions by British novelists from more than a century ago, including George Eliot's Middlemarch, Charles Dickens' Bleak House, William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.[5]

The 1349-page novel alternatively offers satirical and earnest examinations of national political issues in the period leading up to the first post-Independence national election of 1952, including Hindu-Muslim strife, the status of lower caste peoples such as the jatav, land reforms and the eclipse of the feudal princes and landlords, academic affairs, abolition of the Zamindari system, family relations and a range of further issues of importance to the characters.

The novel is divided into 19 parts with, generally, each part focusing on a different subplot. Each part is described in rhyming couplet form on the contents page.

Characters in A Suitable Boy

The four main families in the novel are:

Four family trees are provided in the beginning of the novel to help readers keep track of the complicated interwoven family networks.

Some other prominent characters, not mentioned above, include:

Real people and events

References

  1. ↑ Vikram Seth at contemporarywriters.com Archived October 17, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ Randomhouse interview with Vikram Seth
  3. ↑ Size Does Matter. The Longest Novels. AbeBooks
  4. ↑ Armitstead, Claire (13 September 2013). "Vikram Seth finds a suitable publisher". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
  5. ↑ Ranjan Ghosh (2006). (In)fusion Approach: Theory, Contestation, Limits: (In)fusionising a Few Indian English Novels. University Press of America. pp. 214–. ISBN 978-0-7618-3464-9.

Reviews

External links

Further reading

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