Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy: Search for an Indian Identity

Vikram Seth has been awarded the 1994 Commonwealth Writers Prize for his ‘magnum opus’ A Suitable Boy. The novel, a landmark in the history of Indian literature, reflects contemporary reality; it truthfully depicts the social and political life of the post-independence India. It reveals that Vikram Seth is a reliable spokesman of India’s cultural heritage and her national identity. The present book is the first full-length study of A Suitable Boy; it takes into account different aspects of the novel and offers a comprehensive analysis of these. Following the immortal dictum of T.S. Eliot that analysis and comparison are the chief tools of literary criticism, the author closely examines the theme and technique of the novel, revealing his penetrating insight and wide knowledge of not only Indian-English literature and English literature but also the history of India and England. His analysis of the political situation in 1951-52 is as masterly as his study of cultural decadence, social mobility and religious fermentation and the death of old values. Again, his examination of the use of English in India–a mixture of Hinglish, Bangalish, Tanglish, Urglish and Pucka Sahibish, introduced in a considerable degree in A Suitable Boy–is an example of linguistic study in the style of a forensic expert.