The modern classic Vikram Seth is a true citizen of the world. Born in India, he studied at Oxford and Stanford University in California, where instead of a dissertation in economics he wrote his first novel, The Golden Gate, about American yuppies — and it was a novel in verse; moreover, it was written from beginning to end in Onegin stanzas. And after many years of work, The Worthy Groom was published — “an epic, multi-figured, like the novels of Dickens or Trollope, and as vast as India itself” (San Francisco Chronicle), a record in many respects: the longest novel in the history of English literature that was published in one volume; translations into three dozen languages and a worldwide circulation of 26 million copies.
The action takes place in the fictional city of Brahmpur on the banks of the Ganges shortly after India gained independence; Mrs. Rupa Mehra, having married off her eldest daughter Savita, is trying to find a worthy groom for her youngest daughter, a student Lata - and she, as a modern girl, has her own opinion on this matter and is inclined to listen not to her elders, but to her heart. Now she has to choose from three suitors - a peer student Kabir, a famous poet Amit and Haresh, a rising star in the shoe business...
In 2020, BBC One released a mini-series based on the novel, known in Russian as “A Suitable Groom”; the director was Mira Nair (“Vanity Fair”, “New York, I Love You”), and the script was written by the renowned Andrew Davies (“Les Miserables”, “War and Peace”, “Brideshead Revisited”, “Northanger Abbey”, “Sense and Sensibility”).
Author: Vikram Seth
Translation: Vysotsky Lev, Romanova E. I., Olear Andrey Mikhailovich
Year of issue: 2023
Publisher: Inostranka
Cover type: hardcover
Pages: 1056
Dimensions:
217x155x50 mm
ISBN: 978-5-389-23036-1