Two Lives - Vikram Seth
TWO LIVES tells the remarkable story of Seth's great uncle and aunt. His great uncle
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Shanti left India for medical school in Berlin in the 1930s and lodged with a German Jewish family. In the household was a daughter Henny who urged her mother 'not to take the blackie'. But a friendship developed and each managed to leave Germany and found their way to Britain as the Nazis rose to power. Shanti joined the army and lost his right arm at the battle of Monte Cassino while Henny (whose family were to die in the camps) made a life for herself in her adopted country. After the war they married and lived the emigre life in north London where Shanti despite the loss of his arm became a much-loved dentist. During his own adolescence in England Vikram Seth lived with Shanti and Henny and came to know and love them deeply. His is the third life in this story of TWO LIVES. This is also a book about history encompassing as it does many of the most significant themes and events in the 20th century whose currents are reflected in the lives of Shanti Henny and their family: from the Raj and the Indian freedom movement to the Third Reich the Holocaust and British postwar society.
secret that touches the heart of her music ...AN EQUALl MUSIC is a book about love about the love of a woman lost and found and lost again; it is a book about music and how the love of music can run like a passionate fugue through a life. It is the story of Michael of Julia and of the love that binds them. 'A novel that can stand being reread and reread but the first time round is an emotional cliffhanger ...secure a copy for yourself settle down and prepare for the unforgettable' Sunday Times
attempts to find her a suitable husband through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in post-Independence India and involving the lives of four large families and those who orbit them it is also a vast panoramic exploration of a whole continent at a crucial hour as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great General Election and the chance to map its own destiny. 'A SUITABLE BOY may prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of this century - perhaps even the book to restore the serious reading public's faith in the contemporary novel ...You should make time for it. It will keep you company for the rest of your life' Daniel Johnson The Times
of Hyde Park, takes early morning dips in the Serpentine, has a French girlfriend named Virginie. But his mind is constantly drawn to his first and only love, Julia, whom he knew in Vienna many years earlier. When he catches sight of Julia on a London bus, he cannot help but pursue her. Vikram Seth's new novel is a gently-paced, multi-layered work, proceeding in short sections which flit from Michael's ongoing search for Julia back to his childhood as a Rochdale butcher's son, his early training and breakdown in Vienna under the tyrannical Carl Kall, and the emotional history of his quartet; while Michael's discovery of a Beethoven trio rewritten as a string quintet acts as a motif for Michael's pursuit of the lost Julia: can Michael recapture the magic of the past, like Beethoven, who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed? Seth is quite brilliant at conveying the intense and complex interplay of chamber musicians, in rehearsal and performance (an odd, obsessed, introspective, separatist breed), and manages the near-impossible--to write in 1999 about Art and Love without embarrassment. --Alan Stewart
Advantages: Extraordinarily moving and beautifully written Disadvantages: Unbearably sad and at times frustrating.
...VikramSeth is probably most famous as the author of "A Beautiful Boy" and "An Equal Music", but he has also written a travelogue, a novel in verse, and other poetry. His latest book is in yet another genre: a biography of his great-uncle and -aunt, Shanti Uncle and Aunty Henny - their names appear in the acrostic poem he writes as the dedication - two 'ordinary' people who lived through times that were quite out of the ordinary.
What makes this biography far more intimate than the average, however, is the author's close relationship with his subjects. The book is also part autobiography, as Seth recounts his memories of time spent with his aunt and uncle during school holidays while he studied in England - in fact this takes up the first part of the book, as we are introduced to his aunt and uncle through the eyes of their great...
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Advantages: The writing, the setting, the music Disadvantages: The characters are not sow ell defined or likable
...I bought this book, An Equal Music by VikramSeth, for the grand sum of one penny on the basis of a review written by Floon. I was enchanted by his description of the storyline and the author’s writing style. I was not disappointed.
The author, VikramSeth states, in an author’s note located on the last page of the book, that, “Music to me is dearer even than speech”. To convey this, he focuses his novel on the world of music and its performance.
The central character, Michael Holme, is the second violinist in a London-based string quartet. His life has settled somewhat into a rut. He plays his violin; teaches the violin; makes love to one of his students, Virginie; rings his father; all as a matter of routine.
His comfortable lifestyle is suddenly disturbed by a series of events each connected and occurring in parallel...
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Advantages: well written and interesting.. Disadvantages: lenghty passages that could have been trimmed down
...Born in 1952 in Calcutta, India, VIKRAMSETH was educated at Oxford, Stanford University and Nanjing University..He has travelled widely and lived in Britain,China and the USA.He now lives in Calcutta, India
His first novel, THE GOLDEN GATE : A NOVEL IN VERSE(1986), describes the experiences of a group of friends living in California..
His second novel A SUITABLE BOY, at 1347 pages ,is one of the longest novels ever published in a single volume in the English language...It won the prestigious Booker's award for 1994...
Set in the post-indpendance India in the early 1950's, it deals with the efforts of a widowed mother looking for a SUITABLE BOY for her daughter...The novel begins with a wedding and closes with a wedding...It is a very colorful novel with accounts of festivals,the exotic food and the rich and flashy lifestyles...
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02.02.2007
28.08.2004
