indiascribe satire

    V ikram Seth's mega novel, ' A Suitable Boy ', is not for the impatient reader used to slim volumes of some 250 pages to be polished off in one sitting. The saga straddles a hefty 1,349 pages in the hard-bound edition and 1,488 pages in paperback. But don't let the heft put you off reading. The Kindle edition is available. Early warning for the reader At the very outset, Seth warns the reader in a satirical vein. "The superfluous, that very necessary thing..." and "The secret of being a bore is to say everything". Both quotes from Voltaire . Towards the end of the novel, a poet-novelist, perhaps fashioned after the author himself, says at a literary meeting that, faced with ponderous volumes like The Complete Works of William Shakespeare , he just rips out the particular play he would like to read. He says he stuffs the pages in his coat pocket to be read at leisure. Fortunately, there is no need to rip out the pages, especially in a Kindle edit...