After ‘A Suitable Boy’, Vikram Seth chases ‘A Suitable Girl’

NEW DELHI - Novelist Vikram Seth is chasing a new story, “A Suitable Girl”, which is a sequel of his popular novel, “A Suitable Boy”.

” ‘A Suitable Boy’ was a very long book. I did not think it would get published. But as it did well, my publishers wanted me to write a sequel. I had left hints in my last book about a sequel. But the inspiration did not come. I had begun to think that I would never write a sequel,” he told the media in an interface Monday evening.

“A Suitable Boy” set in post-Independence India followed the saga of four families over a period of 18 months. It was written in 1993.

The sequel to be set in contemporary India of 2011, 40 years after the timeline of the “A Suitable Boy” which used 1951 as its temporal backdrop, will try to bridge the intervening years through peoples memories, Seth said.

“Lata (the female protagonist of “The Suitable Boy”) will be there. But given the human life expectancy, many of the characters will not be there. India has changed so much and yet so little. It will be looking forward and looking backward. I have just started writing,” Seth said.

It could weave around the relationship between a grandmother and her grandson, Seth hinted.

Born on Kolkata in 1952, Seth was educated at Oxford. He has authored three books, The Golden Gate, A Suitable Boy and Two Lives.

One of the few writers in India who writes in verse, Seth said he was “inspired by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin to write in the poetry format”.

“It is difficult initially, but after a point of time, the poetry prose becomes spontaneous,” he said.