Seth was born on 20 June 1952 in Calcutta. His father, Prem Nath Seth, was an executive of Bata Shoes and his mother, Leila Seth, a Barrister by training, became the first female judge of the Delhi High Court and first woman to become Chief justice of a state High Court in India.[4]
Seth was educated at the all-boys' private boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun, where he was editor-in-chief of The Doon School Weekly.[5] At Doon, he was influenced by his teacher, the mountaineer Gurdial Singh, who taught him geography and according to Leila Seth, "guided Vikram in many ways...encouraged him to appreciate Western classical music and instilled in him a love of adventure and daring."[5] Singh later described Seth as an "indefatigable worker, and he maintains without difficulty his distinguished level in studies...he has put in enormous amount of energy in other spheres of school life, in dramatics, in debating, in first aid, in music, and in editing the Doon School Weekly."[5] After graduating from Doon, Seth went to Tonbridge School, England, to complete his A-levels.[6][7] Later he 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.[8][9][10]
Work and style
Seth has published eight books of poetry and three 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. It was adapted into a BBC television drama miniseries in 2020.[11] 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.
A sequel to A Suitable Boy,A Suitable Girl, was announced in 2009, but has yet to be published.
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".[12] 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)[13] with £500,000 for An Equal Music and £1.4 million for Two Lives.[14] He prepared an acrostic poem[15] for his address at Gordon's 2005 memorial service.[16]
On 16 June, 2024, publishing house Speaking Tiger announced the release of Seth's English translation of the sacred Hindu hymn "Hanuman Chalisa" - his first new work in over a decade.[17]
Views
Seth commented on the Indian general elections held during the summer of 2024 saying that "we live in a better situation now than we lived a month ago". He made this comment less than a month after the elections were over and a new coalition government had been sworn in. Seth said "at least now there is somewhat of limitation on autocracy."[18]
On the recent sanction[19] to prosecute the author Arundhati Roy, he noted that it was "craziness."[18]
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