Main content

Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy, is interviewed by Kirsty Young and chooses his eight records for Desert Island Discs.

Kirsty Young's castaway is the author Vikram Seth.

His novel A Suitable Boy was nearly a decade in the writing, but it was a huge and immediate hit and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He is now working on a follow-up novel called A Suitable Girl. He's due to finish work on it in 2013 - 20 years after the original work was published. The pace of work, he admits, is slow: "The sound of deadlines pushing past is one of the sounds that authors are most familiar with - it's very much in the gestational period."

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Available now

45 minutes

Last on

Fri 27 Jan 2012 09:00

Music Played

  • The Beach Boys

    Fun, Fun Fun

    Composer: Wilson/Love

    • The Beach Boys Greatest Hits.
    • EMI.
  • Lata Mangeshkar

    Ab Raat Guzarne Vali Hai -The Night will Fade into Dawn

    Composer: Shankar Jaikshan & Hasrat Jaipuri

    • Golden Voices from the Silver Screen.
    • Globe Style.
  • Castaway's Favourite

    • BBC Sound Archive

      Nightingales and Lancaster Bombers recorded in a Surrey Wood

      Composer: On Location in 1942

      • BBC.
  • Franz Schubert

    Erster Verlust

    Artist: Ian Bostridge - with Julius Drake on the piano

    • Schubert: Lieder.
    • EMI.
  • Johann Sebastian Bach

    St Matthew Passion - Am Abend, da es kuhle war

    Artist: Cornelius Hauptmann -with the English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardiner

    • Bach: St Matthew Passion.
    • Archive.
  • Bach

    Partita for Solo Violin No.3 in E Major

    Artist: Philippe Honore

    • An Unequal Music.
    • Decca.
  • Mark Padmore

    Thoughts While Travelling at Night

    Composer: Alec Roth with words by Vikram Seth translated from the Chinese poet Du Fu.

    • Songs in Time of War.
    • Signum Classics.
  • Amir Khan

    Raga Marwa

    Composer: Traditional improvisation

    • Raga Marwa, Darbari Kanada.
    • HMV.
  • Book Choice

    • Tang shi sanbai shou (Three Hundred Tang Poems)

  • Luxury Choice

    • Calligraphy materials

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Kirsty Young
Interviewed Guest Vikram Seth

Broadcasts

  • Sun 22 Jan 2012 11:15
  • Fri 27 Jan 2012 09:00

Featured in...

The Desert Island Discs podcast

The Desert Island Discs podcast

Subscribe or download individual episodes.

Listen to over 2,000 programmes

Articles

Articles

Read the surprising things we've learned about some stand-out castaways.

Podcast