About Vikram Seth's "Two Lives"

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics - English - Literature, Works, , language: English, abstract: migration, and double migration, a diasporic writer is

challenged and ruptured by the multiplicity of ambivalent

affiliations of language, class, race, gender and sexuality. The

writer often tends to deal with these affiliations as a mode of

postcolonial grand narrative¹ exposing the theoretical clichés

of marginalization and resistance. But a writer of a much

greater sensibility transcends these issues and moves

towards a global narrative of reconciliation and resolution. A

master of every genre ¿ whether it is poetry, novels, libretto,

travelogue or children book ¿ Vikram Seth¿s Two Lives²

exhibits refreshing change in the postcolonial narrative

technique. A masterful fusion of biography, memory,

autobiography, documentary, history, fiction and essay like

excursions, it resists theory biased theme of cultural

resistance and gravitates towards a narrative of global

resolution. Deeply entrenched in the history of Second World

War it is a powerful reminder of the horrors and trauma of

the War. Two Lives does not do quite what is expected of a

postcolonial narrative or of an English novel in the tradition

of Jane Austen (as Seth¿s magnum opus A Suitable Boy³ is

considered).A cosmopolitan4 story, narrated by a truly

cosmopolitan writer, It resists any branding of an Indian

writing in English.