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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
大象传媒 Radio 4 FM

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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

    • 大象传媒 Sound Archive

      Nightingales and Lancaster Bombers recorded in a Surrey Wood

      Composer: On Location in 1942

      • 大象传媒.

  • 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

Presenter Kirsty Young
Interviewed Guest Vikram Seth

Broadcasts

  • Sun 22 Jan 2012 11:15
    大象传媒 Radio 4
  • Fri 27 Jan 2012 09:00
    大象传媒 Radio 4 FM

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