Vikram Seth was born in India in 1952. He studied at Oxford, Standford and Nanjing Universities, and spent two years in China doing research on economic demography. He is trained as an economist and has lived for several years in the UK, California, China and India. His works include The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse, A Suitable Boy, From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet and four volumes of poetry titled Mappings, The Humble Administrator's Garden, All You Who Sleep Tonight and Beastly Tales From Here And There. He has translated some Chinese poems into English in a book called Three Chinese Poets. His most recent book is the novel An Equal Music which hit the book market along with Rushdie' s Ground Beneath Her Feet.
        Vikram Seth was paid $430,000 by the British publishers Orion for his second novel A Suitable Boy. The 1,349 page novel is considered to be the longest novel in a single volume.