Description

It is 1951, India is four years into Independence, and Mrs Rupa Mehra is determined that her younger daughter Lata — nineteen, headstrong, studying English Literature in the fictional university town of Brahmpur — will marry the suitable boy of her mother’s choosing. Lata, naturally, has other ideas.

Across 1,349 magisterial pages, Vikram Seth’s beloved epic follows four families — the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Khans, and the Chatterjis — through one decisive year in the life of the new Indian republic. There is Lata’s mother working her formidable matchmaking network. There is the first general election under universal franchise. There is land reform and the slow dismantling of the zamindari order. There is the courtesan Saeeda Bai and her tabla player. There are the riots in Brahmpur. There is the candidate Maan Kapoor who is falling, against every conceivable rule, in love with the wrong person.

Warm, witty, immensely intelligent, and rich beyond measure in the textures of post-Independence India, *A Suitable Boy* is the great novel of the early Indian republic — comparable in ambition only to Tolstoy and Dickens.

A book to disappear into for a season. A book to keep on the shelf for the rest of your life.