Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate is a novel in verse. It was first published in 1986 and then in 1989 by Oxford University Press, Delhi. Seth got the much coveted Sahitya Akademi Award for this book in 1988. The poet-novelist puts in about 13 month hard labour to complete this work in verse. But surprisingly enough, it bears neither Indian character, nor Indian ethos, nor even Indian locale. There are other novels written by Indian novelists like Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga and Chetan Bhagat but they all employ Indian theme and Indian characters to bear upon their tales. The Golden Gate by Seth is a typical novel which has been written exclusively against the background of California. The novel may be called ‘a Californian novel’. It is full of echoes from customs and manners, functions and ceremonies of California.
Research Scholar, Dept. of English, Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
