In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is today time to announce the November–December 2025 topic challenge.
Based on the number of votes (+4 / -1), the eleventh and final topic challenge fully in 2025 will be:
Vikram Seth
What's a topic challenge?
See the meta posts linked above, and also this main meta post. In short, during November and December you are invited to try to read at least one work by Vikram Seth and ask questions about it.
Participation is not obligatory in any sense, and questions on other works are more than welcome during November and December too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.
How can I take part?
By getting hold of some works by Vikram Seth and
- asking good questions about them or
- answering questions that have been posted as part of this challenge or
- writing a review on our Tumblr blog.
Questions about these works should be tagged with vikram-seth and other tags as appropriate, e.g., poetry or the title of the relevant novel, etc.
We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.
CDR's presentation of the topic is as follows:
Vikram Seth is a versatile writer, though, as I write that, I realize that to call him "versatile" is among the worst ways to describe him, compressing lamely as it does the depth and breadth and the continuities and novelties in his works into a dumb platitude. He says:
I find the possibilities of different genres attract me – I would be bored if I were confined to one, and this boredom would show in what I wrote; on the other hand, versatility has always raised natural suspicions of dilettantism, of ‘not yet having found one’s voice’.
"Forms and Inspirations": London Review of Books
The diversity in his œuvre makes him a good choice for a Topic Challenge, too, because there is something in there for everyone. We could discuss his poetry, his translations, his novels, his libretti, his essays on literature, his memoir, his travelogue, and so on. The only thing he perhaps has not yet written is his thesis.
What's next?
- Vote for the next topic challenge (December–January), or propose your own topic!
- Feel free to edit links into this post if you find some good online resources related to the works of Vikram Seth.
