A Suitable Boy
First US edition
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|
| 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 | |
| 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. A sequel, to be called A Suitable Girl, is due for publication in 2017.
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. Seth has stated that the biggest influence on writing A Suitable Boy was the five-volume 18th century Chinese novel The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin.
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Wikipedia