num_pages: 1368
description: An alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here. 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. 
language: English
title: A Suitable Boy
titlecomplete: A Suitable Boy
characters: Savita Mehra, Lata Mehra, Arun Mehra, Meenakshi Mehra (née Chatterji), Pran Kapoor, Maan Kapoor, Amit Chatterji, Varun Mehra, Rupa Mehra
genres: Fiction, Historical, Indian Literature, Asia, India, Romance, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 47456
places: Delhi, India, Kanpur, Brahmapur, Calcutta
series: A Bridge of Leaves
awards: awardedAt: 757411200000
name: WH Smith Literary Award, awardedAt: 757411200000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book Overall
publisher:  Penguin Books Ltd