A great Indian novel?and a beloved classic of modern world literature?turns 30. To mark its anniversary, Speaking Tiger releases a designer edition that will find a place in the home of everyone who has read and loved this novel of a lifetime, and the home of every lover of enduring literature. This is among the finest gifts that any fan of Vikram Seth and of great Indian writing can give oneself and to friends. ?Puts a subcontinent between its covers... [A] massive and magnificent book.??The Sunday Times ?Set in post-independence India, the novel follows for eighteen months or so four linked families in Calcutta, the province of Purva Pradesh and its capital Brahmpur, and the cities?Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow?trawled by the heroine?s mother in her search for a ?suitable boy?? But the greatness of the novel, its unassailable truthfulness, owes less to research than to imagination, an instinctive knowledge of the human heart?with all its varieties of kindness and cruelty? As with all the best books, one feels only dismay when the pages on the right of the tome start thinning out.??The Observer ?This novel, so vast and so amiably peopled, is a long, sweet, sleepless pilgrimage to life? [It] covers India like a sun, warming a whole country in its historical rays.??The Guardian ?An immensely enjoyably novel which describes with unhurried pace the panorama of India? Everything appears familiar to us, yet in fact it is newly minted by a master artist.??Hindustan Times