Vikram Seth’s novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to findthrough love or through exacting maternal appraisala suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis,A Suitable Boytakes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux,A Suitable Boyremains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.