Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth
CBE
Vikram Seth in 2009
Born (1952-06-20) 20 June 1952
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Occupation Novelist, poet
Nationality Indian
Alma mater St. Michael's High School, Patna
Welham Boys' School
The Doon School
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Stanford University
Period 1980–present
Genre Novels, poetry, libretto, travel writing, children's literature, biography/memoir
Notable works A Suitable Boy
The Golden Gate
An Equal Music
A Suitable Girl
Website
www.vikramseth.net

Vikram Seth CBE (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has received several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award. Seth's collections of poetry such as Mappings and Beastly Tales are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry canon.

About

Vikram Seth was born on 20 June 1952 in Kolkata,west bengal India. His father, Prem Nath Seth, was an executive of Bata Shoes and his mother, Leila Seth, a barrister by training, became the first female Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court.[2]

He studied at St. Michael's High School, Patna and at The Doon School in Dehradun, where he edited The Doon School Weekly.[3] After graduating from Doon, Seth went to Tonbridge School, England, to complete his A-levels.[4][5][6] He also studied at St. Xavier's High School, Patna.[7] Later he moved to the United Kingdom and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He then pursued a Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford University though never completed it.[3][8][9]

Having lived in London for many years, Seth maintains residences near Salisbury, England, where he is a participant in local literary and cultural events, having bought and renovated the house of the Anglican poet George Herbert in 1996,[10] and in Jaipur, India.

In 2006, he became a leader of the campaign against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a law against sodomy.[11] His mother has written about Seth's homosexuality and her coming to terms with it in her memoir.[12]

Work

Seth has published eight books of poetry and four novels. In 1980, he wrote Mappings, his first book of poetry. The publication of A Suitable Boy, a 1,349-page novel, propelled Seth into the public limelight. His second novel An Equal Music deals with the troubled love life of a violinist. Seth's work Two Lives published in 2005 is a memoir of the marriage of his great uncle and aunt.

In addition to The Golden Gate, Seth has written other works of poetry including Mappings (1980), The Humble Administrator's Garden (1985), All You Who Sleep Tonight (1990) and Three Chinese Poets (1992). His children's book, Beastly Tales from Here and There (1992) consists of ten stories about animals. He has authored a travel book, From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983), an account of a journey through Tibet, China and Nepal. Vikram Seth was also commissioned by the English National Opera to write a libretto based on the Greek legend of Arion and the Dolphin. The opera was performed for the first time in June 1994.

Career

Seth's former literary agent Giles Gordon recalled being interviewed by Seth for the position:

Vikram sat at one end of a long table and he began to grill us. It was absolutely incredible. He wanted to know our literary tastes, our views on poetry, our views on plays, which novelists we liked.[13]

Seth later explained to Gordon that he had passed the interview not because of commercial considerations, but because unlike the others he was the only agent who seemed as interested in his poetry as in his other writing. Seth followed what he has described as "the ludicrous advance for that book" (£250,000 for A Suitable Boy[14]) with £500,000 for An Equal Music and £1.4 million for Two Lives.[15] He prepared an acrostic poem[16] for his address at Gordon's 2005 memorial service.[17]

Seth was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001.

Work

Novels

Poetry

Children's fiction

  • Arion and the Dolphin (1994)

Non-fiction

  • From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983)
  • Two Lives (2005)
  • The Rivered Earth[21](2011)

Appearances in the following poetry Anthologies

Awards

References

  1. ↑ "Vikram Seth". Desert Island Discs. 22 January 2012. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  2. ↑ Angela Atkins (26 June 2002). Vikram Seth's Suitable Boy: A Reader's Guide. A&C Black. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-8264-5707-3.
  3. 1 2 "Vikram Seth". ekikrat.in. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
  4. ↑ Gupta, R. (2005). Vikram Sath's Art: An Appraisal. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. p. 2. ISBN 9788126905508. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
  5. ↑ "Vikram s Christi College, Oxford".
  6. ↑ Atkins, A. (2002). Vikram Seth's Suitable Boy: A Reader's Guide. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 8. ISBN 9780826457073. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
  7. ↑ "Alumni – St.Xavier's High School". stxavierspatna.in. Archived from the original on 25 November 2015. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
  8. ↑ "The Golden Gate returns to Stanford May 30". news.stanford.edu. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
  9. ↑ Vikram Seth's Founder's Day Address, The Doon School, Penguin Books of Modern Speeches (2009) p.34 "...edited the Weekly and did other things"
  10. ↑ Lewis, Leo; Island, Jindo (29 July 2006), "Listening to God's melodies", The Times, London, retrieved 5 September 2007
  11. ↑ "It Took Me Long To Come To Terms With Myself. Those Were Painful hardware core Years.", Outlook India, 2 October 2006, retrieved 5 September 2007
  12. ↑ "Delhi High Court Chief Justice Leila Seth reveals a mother's trial with a leap of faith". Daily Mail. London.
  13. ↑ Gavron, Jeremy (27 March 1999), "A suitable joy", The Guardian, London, retrieved 5 September 2007 .
  14. ↑ Vikram Seth writes Suitable Boy sequel in The Guardian]] 3 July 2009
  15. ↑ Bhatia, Shyam (1 September 2003), "Seth to get at least $3 million advance", Rediff.com, retrieved 5 September 2007 .
  16. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 15 August 2004. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  17. ↑ "Vikram Seth – Vikram Seth Biography – Poem Hunter". poemhunter.com. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
  18. ↑ "Vikram Seth", DoonOnline: Features & Spotlights, archived from the original on 16 May 2006, retrieved 5 September 2007 .
  19. ↑ "A Suitable Boy". Wikipedia. 2017-05-06.
  20. ↑ Albertazzi, Silvia (20 January 2005), "An equal music, an alien world: postcolonial literature and the representation of European culture", European Review, Cambridge University Press, 13, pp. 103–113, doi:10.1017/S1062798705000104 .
  21. ↑ "Times of India by Shobha John, TNN: 27 Nov 2011, 05.13 am IST : 'I got drunk to write, says Vikram Seth'", The Times Of India, India, 27 November 2011 .
  22. ↑ "Rubana Huq, ed. The Golden Treasury of Writers Workshop Poetry. Review : ASIATIC, VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1, JUNE 2009". journals.iium.edu.my. journals.iium.edu.my. Retrieved 4 September 2018.
  23. ↑ "The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets". cse.iitk.ac.in. cse.iitk.ac.in. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  24. ↑ "Book review: 'Twelve Modern Indian Poets' by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra". indiatoday.in. indiatoday.in. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  25. ↑ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 November 2014. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
  • Chaudhuri, Amit (ed.). "Vikram Seth (born 1952)." The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature. New York: Vintage, 2004:508–537.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.