A Suitable Boy … interminable book about a rather obscure period of Indian history in the ’50s… without war, without the assassination of prime ministers, without… much in the way of sex… without even a glossary… was successful outside India.

All of Vikram Seth’s books are well-written, his presumption to be a poet first and an author second is demonstrated by his lyrical, simple and eminently readable style that is maintained from the first page to last.

Set in the post-indpendence India in the early 1950’s, it deals with the efforts of a widowed mother looking for a SUITABLE BOY for her daughter…The novel begins with a wedding and closes with a wedding…It is a very colorful novel with accounts of festivals,the exotic food and the rich and flashy lifestyles of the rich Indians and the changing political equations, amidst all this a growing romance between a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy.

At the social satire level the story revolves around four deeply intertwined families, three Hindu and one Muslim. The Kapoors represent the Hindi-speaking elite, gaining their ascendancy as part of a new political elite, while the middle-class, Anglicized Mehras firmly believe in the superiority of convent schools, English literature and proper manners. The Chatterjis, eccentric and rather scandalous members of the Bengali intelligentsia, indulge in rhyming couplets and coddle a manic dog named Cuddles, as the Muslim, landowning Khans face legislation that threatens to dissolve their culture and Urdu language along with all feudal land-holdings.

I leave you with a wonderfully accurate quote:

“A SUITABLE BOY may prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of this century (20^th) – perhaps even the book to restore the serious reading public’s faith in the contemporary novel … You should make time for it. It will keep you company for the rest of your life.”