Vikram Seth in the diaspora series! Many eyebrows are bound to be raised. Seth is one writer whose work poses a challenge to contemporary critical theory and defies an easy classification into conventional categories. The present volume looks at his work in the context of multiple locations and multiple affiliations. He shot to fame with the publication of his verse novel The Golden Gate which was heralded for its European connection and America-centred theme. Then he went on to write the account of a journey to China, and several volumes of poems before proceeding to create a family saga based on Indian social constructs in A Suitable Boy. Poet, novelist, travelogue writer, Seth operates within a cosmopolitan mode and belongs to the new category of those cross-cultural writers who outgrow their roots. Is he the syncretic intellectual or the specular one? Equally at home in all cultures or combating them all in some measure? Where do we place his poetics? These and such like other questions are which the writer addresses in the book. Mala Pandurang provides a perceptive analysis of Seth’s writing matching his mobility from one genre to another, and one culture to another, by an equal degree of mobility in critical approaches, and presents a new understanding of Seth’s oeuvre.
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