The best writer of his generation
The Times
This novel, so vast and so amiably peopled, is a long, sweet, sleepless pilgrimage to life . . . His novel deserves thousands of long marriages and suitable readers
Guardian
No one, surely, could wish this novel shorter . . . the greatness of the novel, its unassailable truthfulness, owes less to research than to imagination, an instinctive knowledge of the human heart
Observer
Not merely one of the longest novels in English; it may also prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of [the twentieth] century
The TImes
A quietly monumental novel . . . [Seth] has given that unlikeliest of hybrids, a modest <i>tour de force</i>
TLS
An immensely enjoyable novel which describes with unhurried pace the panorama of India . . . Everything appears familiar to us, yet in fact it is newly minted by a master artist
Hindustan Times
Conceived on a grand scale of the great 19th century novels - <i>War and Peace</i>, <i>Middlemarch</i> - <i>A Suitable Boy</i> grows to match them in breadth and depth . . . [A] massive and magnificent book
Sunday Times
Twentieth anniversary-edition of Seth's masterly hymn to life and love set against the backdrop of an independent India.
THE OBSERVER
A phenomenon, a prodigy, a marvel of 19th century storytelling in the language of today . . . It is hard to believe that Seth is only one man. He writes with the omniscience and authority of a large, orderly committee of experts on Indian politics, law, medicine, crowd psychology, urban and rural social customs, dress, cuisine, horticulture, funerary rites, cricket and even the technicalities of shoe manufacture
Evening Standard