Beastly Tales from Here and There

An attractively packaged gift book offers ten charming, elegant fables in verse from India, China, Greece, Ukraine, and the fantastic Land of Gup. By the author of A Suitable Boy.

Literature & Fiction

SETH, Vikram

Contemporary

Harpercollins

Two Lives

A heartrending new book -- the story of a marriageand the story of two lives -- from the author of theinternational bestselling novel A Suitable Boy
Shanti Behari Seth was born on the eighth day of the eighth month in the eighth year of the twentieth century; he died two years before its close. He was brought up in India in the apparently vigorous but dying Raj and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin -- though he could not speak a word of German -- to study medicine and dentistry. It was here, before he migrated to Britain, that Shanti's path first crossed that of his future wife.
Helga Gerda Caro, known to everyone as "Henny" was also born in 1908, in Berlin, to a Jewish family -- cultured, patriotic, and intensely German. When the family decided to take Shanti as a lodger, Henny's first reaction was, "Don't take the black man!" But a friendship flowered, and when Henny fled Hitler's Germany for England just one month before war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person in the country she knew: Shanti.
Vikram Seth has woven together their astonishing story, which recounts the arrival into this childless couple's lives of their great-nephew from India -- the teenage student Vikram Seth. The result is an extraordinary tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, postwar Germany and 1970s Britain.
Two Lives is both a history of a violent century seen through the eyes of two survivors and an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage, and abiding yet complex love. Part biography, part memoir, part meditation on our times, this is the true tale of two remarkable lives -- a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Harper

Widely acclaimed as one of the world's greatest living writers, Vikram Seth -- author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy -- tells the heartrending true story of a friendship, a marriage, and a century. Weaving together the strands of two extraordinary lives -- Shanti Behari Seth, an immigrant from India who came to Berlin to study in the 1930s, and Helga Gerda Caro, the young German Jewish woman he befriended and later married -- Two Lives is both a history of a violent era seen through the eyes of two survivors and an intimate, unforgettable portrait of a complex, abiding love.

Two Lives: A Memoir

Harper-perennial

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find -- through love or through exacting maternal appraisal -- a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

A Suitable Boy: A Novel (Modern Classics)

United States

Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Two Lives weaves together two extraordinary stories that comprise one astonishing love affair: that of Vikram's great-uncle Shanti, brought up in India and sent in the 1930s to Berlin to study dentistry, and that of his great-aunt Henny, whose German-Jewish family took Shanti in as a lodger. When Henny fled to England just before the war, she was met by the only person she knew in the country: Shanti.
The events that shaped their lives shaped a century: war took Shanti to North Africa, the Middle East and the battle of Monte Cassino, where his right arm was blown off; persecution left Henny desperately searching for news of her mother and sister. After marrying Henny, Shanti defied his injury and once again resumed his profession, and in the 1970s the childless couple welcomed a new arrival to their home: their great-nephew from India, the teenage student, Vikram Seth.
Two Lives is a remarkable tapestry encompassing the history of the twentieth-century; part biography, part memoir, part meditation on our times, it is a true tale masterfully told by one of our greatest living writers.

HarperAudio

A SUITABLE BOY

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: the tale of Lata's--and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra's--attempts to find a suitable boy for Lata, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in the early 1950s in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

A Suitable Boy

Literary

Harperperennial

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: the tale of Lata's - and her mother, Mrs Rupa Mehra's - attempts to find a suitable boy for Lata, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in the early 1950s in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux. A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

Penguin Books, Ltd.

On one level, this is a story about love; the love of a woman lost and found and lost again. A chance sighting on a London bus, a letter that should never have been read, a pianist with a secret that touches the heart of her music: from a multiplicity of details, Vikram Seth creates, once again, a living, breathing world that enchants and grips the reader. This is also a book about music and about how the love of music can run like a passionate theme through a life.

Equal Music

Penguin India

Although famous as a novelist, Vikram Seth had written three books of poetry before A Suitable Boy was published in 1993. In this volume the poems evoke a serene and melancholy awareness of the seasons passing, from summer's end to spring.

Summer Requiem: A Book of Poems

Poetry

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

Widely celebrated as the author of the worldwide bestselling novels A SUITABLE BOY and AN EQUAL MUSIC, Vikram Seth is also a highly acclaimed poet with a substantial body of work. Here, for the first time in one volume, readers can appreciate the beauty and scope of his poetic vision.  Including MAPPINGS, THE HUMBLE ADMINISTRATOR'S GARDEN, ALL YOU WHO SLEEP TONIGHT, THREE CHINESE POETS, BEASTLY TALES FROM HERE AND THERE, ARION AND THE DOLPHIN, THE RIVERED EARTH and SUMMER REQUIEM, this collection displays the richness of Vikram Seth's imagination and the brilliant diversity of his craft.

Collected Poems

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SETH, Vikram. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by SETH, Vikram

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SETH, Vikram. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Beastly Tales from Here and There

Two Lives

Two Lives: A Memoir

A Suitable Boy: A Novel (Modern Classics)

Two Lives

A Suitable Boy

A Suitable Boy

Equal Music

Summer Requiem: A Book of Poems

Collected Poems