Vikram Seth reads from his new book " Two Lives" on Thursday, November 17th, 6.30 pm  at the Harvard Book Store. Don't miss this wonderful opportunity !

Vikram Seth's epic family novel, A Suitable Boy, was an international publishing sensation that won him millions of readers and favorable comparisons with Tolstoy (Washington Post Book World). In TWO LIVES (HarperCollins; October 25, 2005; $27.95), this gifted writer returns to matters of family, this time with an eloquent dual biography of a beloved uncle and aunt, whose extraordinary, intertwined stories of cultural diaspora traverse some of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century — from India at the end of the Raj to Germany before and during the war, to Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, and Britain in the 1970s.

      Seth first met this interracial couple when he came to London as a prep school student. Young Vikram knew little about his proper yet affectionate Indian uncle and his more reserved German aunt, but they welcomed him into their home and, in time, almost adopted him as their own. Years later, after Henny died, Vikram decided to write this book about their unconventional lives, and he conducted interviews with the elderly Shanti. But much remained shadowy about the circumspect Henny until an invaluable cache of letters, unknown even to Shanti, was found in a forgotten trunk in their attic. This secret correspondence, much of it written to friends in Berlin after the war, allowed Vikram to flesh out the details of this singular story.

      Shanti Behari Seth, Vikram's maternal great uncle, left India in his early twenties to study dentistry in Berlin. With little knowledge of German, and knowing no one, he arrived in the city at the time when Hitler was rising power. Eventually, he boarded with the Caros, a cultured Jewish family, and he became a part of the intimate circle of the two daughters, Lola and Henny — though it had been Henny who initially told her mother not to rent to the “black man .” He qualified as a dentist, but Nazi restrictions against foreigners prevented Shanti from practicing his profession, so he moved to Britain to continue his education and find work. Later, as Nazi storm clouds gathered, Henny was able to obtain an exit visa, and it was Shanti—the one person she knew in England-- who met her at London's Victoria Station.

      Once the war began, Shanti enlisted and was sent with the medical corps to the Sudan, Syria, and Italy. He lost his right arm during an enemy mortar attack, a potentially disastrous occurrence that threatened his future as a dentist. Henny, who had left her mother and sister in Berlin, lost all communication with them in 1943. Unbeknownst to her, they had been transported to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, where they met their deaths. Only after the war, as detailed in her correspondence, would she learn the dark truth about their final days.

      When he returned to England, Shanti was fitted with an artificial arm. Later, despite his handicap, he set up a practice as a dentist. He and Henny became inseparable friends, though they did not marry until 1951, when they were in their forties. They remained childless.

      For Seth, the exploration of Shanti and Henny's lives opens up into a wider story of life in Europe during and after the Second World War. It is a story of hardship, deprivation, sacrifice and sadness, but also of friendship and hope. Seth's discoveries, most notably Henny's long hidden letters, provide a vivid, emotional portrait of the horrors and betrayals in Germany under the Nazis and after. By reconstructing his uncle and aunt's life stories, together and apart, this eloquent writer underscores, too, the essential power of friendship and family in helping ordinary people navigate the vicissitudes of history.

      Told with an unusual structure that combines historical narrative with letters, interviews, and fragments of Seth's own memoirs, TWO LIVES is a heartfelt and truly original work. This emotionally arresting memorial to these two previously uncelebrated and extraordinary lives is another literary tour de force from one of the most innovative writers of our time.

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TWO LIVES
By Vikram Seth
Publication Date: October 25, 2005
HarperCollinsPublishers
ISBN: 0060599669

Hardcover/$27.95/512 pages

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