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Two Lives

Two Lives

Vikram Seth
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Shanti Behari Seth was born and brought up in India in the late years of the Raj, and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin to study medicine and dentistry. It was here that Shanti’s path first crossed that of his future wife, as a lodger in her father’s house. Henny Gerda Caro was born in Berlin, to a Jewish family, cultured, patriotic and intensely German. A friendship flowered between them, and when Henny fled Hitler’s Germany for England, just a month before the war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person she knew in that country: Shanti.
Vikram Seth, their great-nephew from India, arrived in this childless couple’s life as a teenage student. Now he has woven together the astonishing story of Shanti and Henny, and the result is an extraordinary tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, post-war Germany and 1970s Britain. Two Lives is both a history of a violent country seen through the eyes of two survivors as well as an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage and abiding yet complex love. This is the true tale of two remarkable lives-a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.

Imprint: India Penguin

Published: Jan/2015

ISBN: 9780143420255

Length : 612 Pages

MRP : ₹695.00

Two Lives

Vikram Seth

Shanti Behari Seth was born and brought up in India in the late years of the Raj, and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin to study medicine and dentistry. It was here that Shanti’s path first crossed that of his future wife, as a lodger in her father’s house. Henny Gerda Caro was born in Berlin, to a Jewish family, cultured, patriotic and intensely German. A friendship flowered between them, and when Henny fled Hitler’s Germany for England, just a month before the war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person she knew in that country: Shanti.
Vikram Seth, their great-nephew from India, arrived in this childless couple’s life as a teenage student. Now he has woven together the astonishing story of Shanti and Henny, and the result is an extraordinary tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, post-war Germany and 1970s Britain. Two Lives is both a history of a violent country seen through the eyes of two survivors as well as an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage and abiding yet complex love. This is the true tale of two remarkable lives-a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback
Ebooks

Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth is the acclaimed author of three novels: The Golden Gate, An Equal Music and A Suitable Boy, one of the most beloved and widely read books of recent times. He has also written five books of poetry, an opera libretto, a book of other libretti, and two highly regarded works of non-fiction, From Heaven Lake and Two Lives. He is at present at work on A Suitable Girl.

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