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.

Siddhartha Singh (Head of the English Department, M. M. P. G. College, Kalakankar, Pratapgarh, U. P. India) studied at Allahabad, U. P. India, for his post graduate degree. He worked on the critical theories of Harold Bloom. An exhaustive study of Harold Bloom's critical writings earned him a D. Phil. degree in 2008. Along with his ground-breaking work Understanding Harold Bloom and T. S. Eliot (2012), he has published several papers on theory, diasporic and Indian writing in English and has participated in many international and national conferences and seminars. His next book, a full length study of Harold Bloom, will be published shortly.