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 Seths 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 Seths 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.