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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} a Suitable Girl by Vikram Seth Tanya Maniktala: a Suitable Girl in a Suitable Cast Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Suitable Girl by Vikram Seth Tanya Maniktala: a suitable girl in a suitable cast. Leading from the front in the BBC adaptation of Vikram Seth’s much-loved blockbuster novel A Suitable Boy : no pressure for the 23-year-old newcomer. Especially as she’s backed by a 110-strong cast with one key unifying factor. Journey back to 1993. Clinton’s in the White House, Meat Loaf is topping the charts forever and author Vikram Seth has just released a gigantic novel – 1300 pages to be precise – on the subject of forbidden love. If you never quite got round to finishing (or even starting) the book, or you want to see the characters brought vividly to life, you’re in luck. The BBC have adapted this epic set in India in 1951 – four years after the partition of what was British India into India and Pakistan – into a six-part series. Written by Andrew Davies ( Bridget Jones , Sense & Sensibility , House of Cards ) and directed by Indian-American film director Mira Nair, the achievement of wrestling such a gargantuan tale into ​ “ only” six hours isn’t the sole revelation. This period drama is the BBC’s first production to have no white actors among it’s 110-person cast. “ Vikram Seth’s story is about India and the people of India,” says lead actress Tanya Maniktala, ​ “ so how could you expect anybody else to do it but us?” For the 23-year-old, dialling in from New Delhi, A Suitable Boy is her breakout role. Since first appearing in YouTube web series Flames (a heartwarming story of teenage romance), Maniktala has to-and-fro’d with the idea of acting. “ I sort of convinced myself that acting wasn’t for me, so I quit and started working as a copywriter,” she admits. Battling shyness and a crisis of confidence, Maniktala contemplated leaving India entirely. ​ “ I had actually planned on going to Australia to visit my sister to get a fresh start from all of this because I was clearly done with life. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. Then Mira called me.” Maniktala plays Lata Mehra, an assertive university student on the hunt for independence, who defies her mother’s wishes of arranged marriage. “ There is the obvious theme of love and romance, but there’s also a political context to all of it – we see these rebels in this story,” she says of an intense story based around love across religious and political divides. “[So] it’s not a period drama in that sense because these themes are still very relatable.” Vikram Seth finds a suitable publisher. Two cheering pieces of books news to round off the week. Fans of Vikram Seth will be delighted to hear that the sequel to A Suitable Boy – his family saga set in 1950s India – will be published after all. Seth was called to account by Penguin after he failed to deliver the manuscript for A Suitable Girl in time for the 20th anniversary of his 1993 bestseller this autumn, thus defaulting on a $1.7m (£1.1m) advance. As part of the publication package, Penguin bought the paperback rights from A Suitable Boy's original publisher Orion – and it is Orion that has stepped back into the frame to save the agonised author. A Suitable Girl will now be published in the autumn of 2016, giving Seth plenty of time to match the epic scale of A Suitable Boy – one of the longest books ever published in English, at 1,349 pages – should he so choose. Seth has played the field with his previous books, publishing his 1986 debut The Golden Gate with Faber, his 1999 novel An Equal Music with Weidenfeld and Nicholson, and his 2005 memoir Two Lives with Little, Brown. But he comes over all sentimental when considering his return to the publisher that took the biggest risk for him. "Twenty years ago, Orion, who were then quite a new publisher, took a risk and brought out A Suitable Boy," he said. "It is entirely in the fitness of things that A Suitable Girl will be joining her companion. And for my part, it is a great pleasure to be home again". Meanwhile, an entirely different model of a publishing career is demonstrated by Sarah Waters, whose longstanding publisher Virago has just announced details of her next novel, which will be published next autumn. The name of the novel is yet to be announced, but her website reveals that she is moving back in time to the early 1920s, after the 1940s settings of her previous two novels The Night Watch and The Little Stranger: It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far, and how devastatingly, the disturbances will reach … Passions will be mounting among the legions of Waters fans at this deliciously disturbing news. Vikram Seth in trouble over uncompleted Suitable Boy sequel. The novelist Vikram Seth is in delicate negotiations with his publisher Penguin over a $1.7m (£1.1m) advance for the sequel to A Suitable Boy after failing to deliver the manuscript on time. Penguin UK bought world English language rights (excluding US) to A Suitable Girl, and set a deadline of June 2013 in the hope of publishing in the autumn to coincide with the 20th anniversary of A Suitable Boy's original publication. The publishing package on which the advance was staked included the new novel and a reissue of the paperback edition of A Suitable Boy, for which Penguin acquired rights from original publisher Orion. However Seth's muse is not dancing to the publisher's marketing beat, and his agent David Godwin is fighting to keep the deal on track, acknowledging that the crucial 20th anniversary date has been missed. Penguin's acquiring editors could have picked up clues from Seth's earlier work that he might have trouble hitting his deadline. A Guardian profile in 1999 pointed out that the character Amit Chatterji in A Suitable Boy is a loose self-portrait. "He mocks himself … for sitting about all day staring out of the window." It continued: "The first section of A Suitable Boy, beginning with the wedding of the older sister of Lata, whose search for a husband is the heart of the book, was written quite quickly. But then Seth found himself blocked and, realising he did not know enough about India in the 1950s, concentrated on research for a year." Seth described his own internal conflicts: "There have been dark periods, when I've felt hopeless in love, when I haven't been able to see a way out of a situation. Metaphysical struggles, if you like. At times I was acutely incapable of doing anything." A Suitable Boy is a big act to follow: at 1,349 pages it is one of the longest books ever published in English. Set in India just after the country gained independence, the novel follows the story of four families over 18 months, as a mother searches for a suitable boy to marry her daughter. Although the book became a huge bestseller and was critically acclaimed, it was famously snubbed for the Booker Prize shortlist, prompting its publisher Anthony Cheetham to call the Booker judges "a bunch of wankers". A Suitable Girl is expected to move the action from 1950s India to the present day, where we catch up with heroine Lata, now as a grandmother matchmaking for her grandson. Observer writer Robert McCrum, who published Seth's 1986 novel The Golden Gate at Faber, said: "Ever since The Golden Gate, Vikram is a true artist who has always wrestled with words and meanings. In my experience of not publishing A Suitable Boy [McCrum was offered the book but turned it down], watching it mature into the huge bestseller it eventually became, Vikram is a writer who will always give his work another polish. He's slow, painstaking, but really good. The kind of novelist who's worth the wait." Penguin is gaining a reputation for taking a hard-nosed attitude toward writers who fail to deliver. Last September the Guardian reported that it was suing 12 authors in a New York court over late or nonexistent manuscripts. They included Prozac Nation writer Elizabeth Wurtzel and New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead. A Suitable Boy is one of the few literary novels from recent decades to have reached a mass readership: It was dramatised for radio in 2002, though a promised film version failed to materialise. More recently, a call by Guardianwitness for incongruous book covers, elicited this unusual interpretation of A Suitable Boy from one fan. Finally, a suitable girl for Vikram Seth. Fifteen years after writing that wrist-breaker A Suitable Boy (ASB), one of the longest novels in English language, Vikram Seth is all charged up about the recently announced sequel — A Suitable Girl . He has reportedly taken an advance amount of Rs 13-14 crores from Penguin UK, the highest ever for an Indian fiction writer.
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