description: 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: BBC