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A Suitable Boy (1993)

Novel by Vikram Seth

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.

The novel is divided into 19 parts with, generally, each part focusing on a different subplot. Each part is described in rhyming couplet form on the contents page. A sequel, to be called A Suitable Girl, was due for publication in 2017. As of 2020 this was still unpublished though Seth confirmed in a 2018 interview that he was still working on the book as well as more material in the A Suitable Boy universe to be collectively called A Bridge of Leaves.

A six-part series adapted from the novel and titled A Suitable Boy, directed by Mira Nair, written by Andrew Davies and starring Tabu, Ishaan Khatter, Tanya Maniktala and Rasika Dugal, among others, is broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom from Sunday, 26 July 2020.

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