Vikram Seth's novel is, at it's core, a love story - the story of a young girl's search for the man she will marry. We meet Lata and her family; her gentle sister Savita, just married herself to the suitable if dark-skinned Pran; her widowed mother Mrs Rupa Mehra, fussy, loving, in a permanent state of grief and feverish activity; as well as a whole array of inlaws and outlaws, the aristocratic Khans, the urbane Chatterjis, and the provincial Kapoors.
Three suitors present themselves. Only one of the can win Lata's hand - by love or by maternal persuasion.

A rich, colourful explosion of Indian culture spanning from Madras to Demerara, this novel is so vividly told and so skilfully woven that you'll find yourself visualizing the story as you go along, in full colour with surround sound, smells and all. Three children, two countries, three stories, three different decades - separate, yet cohesively bonded into one epic saga.

Landlords the world over are not the most popular people, and there is little morning when the greedy, ruthless Mahendralal Bakhle is blown up on his boat on the beautiful Periyar Lake. Suspicion falls on the boat-boy who died with him, but Dominic Felse, one of a party of young tourists accidentally involved in the fatality, is not convinced of the boy's guilt. And when they move on, it seems that the terror is still pursuing them.

What did happen to Miss Quested in the Marabar Caves? This tantalising question provides the intense drama at the centre of Forster's last and greatest novel, which explores racial tension in colonial India.