8 - Conclusions

Summary

This study has attempted a comprehensive survey of Vikram Seth's oeuvre in an endeavour to trace the trajectory of the author's growth as a writer and discuss the major themes and ideas that form the basis of his work. A few conclusions on Seth's location in Indian Writing in English and the general features of his writing can be offered as a way of allowing this examination to culminate.

In the climate of literary practice where the emphasis seems to be predominantly on imagining the nation through the retrieval of histories under erasure and foregrounding, in the attempt, a self-reflexive awareness of the act of narration, Seth marks a departure in several ways. He is perhaps the only Indian writer today to experiment with so many genres of literature: poetry in metre and rhyme that eschew current practices of Indian poets who largely use free verse, a travelogue, a verse novel in sonnets, a classically realistic novel, a modernist novel and a biographic memoir. Though several Indian writers and novelists locate the themes of their work in other geographical areas in addition to India, the shaping consciousness of their work is often Indian, which then leads to liminal and hybrid representations that have now become the concerns of the academic world. Seth's changing locales – India, China, America and Europe – do not exhibit these preoccupations. Moreover, Seth's realism does not question modes of representation, and his novel A Suitable Boy asserts unquestioningly ideas of development and progress of the nation towards a desired secular and modern vision.

The world and its affairs interest Seth and this is discernible in all his works, whether verse or prose.