Vikram Seth's work is characterized by the innovative recuperation of “unfashionable” and “traditional” forms such as the realist roman-fleuve and the novel in verse. Such recuperation goes against the current of cross-pollination between genres and stylistic experimentalism which characterizes other writers like Salman Rushdie or Amitav Ghosh, to whom he is often compared. Reading Seth, one experiences the sense of an old-fashioned conception of the relationship between reader and writer; engaging the attention and interest of the “common reader” (as he defines it) becomes a programmatic element of both his poetry and his prose, and his books reveal a sophisticated yet unselfconscious return to realist narrative and formal poetic

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First published 30 October 2002

Citation: Srivastava, Neelam. "Vikram Seth". The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 October 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4020, accessed 9 February 2010.]