Two Lives

by Vikram Seth

Novelist and poet Vikram Seth memorializes his great-uncle Shanti, an Indian dental surgeon, and his great-aunt Henny, a German Jew. Told in three parts, via Seth's own reminiscences, interviews conducted by Seth with Shanti, and Henny's personal papers, Seth touchingly recounts the history of the couple and their relationship: how the young Shanti fell in love with Henny, his landlady's daughter, when he studied dentistry in Berlin; Henny's escape from Germany a month before the outbreak of World War II, leaving behind a mother and sister to die in the concentration camps; Shanti's service in the British army, leading to the loss of his arm; and Shanti and Henny's eventual marriage and life together in England after a lengthy courtship.

Editions of Two Lives

ISBN 9780061129148	Binding/Format Digital	Publisher Harper Audio	Date	Price None Available
ISBN 9781405501712	Binding/Format Digital	Publisher Time Warner -UK	Date	Price None Available
ISBN 9780060878948	Binding/Format Compact Disc	Publisher Harperaudio	Date 2005	Price $3.98	New
ISBN 9780060599669	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Harpercollins	Date 2005	Price $1.00	Good

Publisher Notes

Blending elements of memoir, history, and biography, the best-selling author of A Suitable Boy chronicles the story of Shanti Behari Seth, a young Indian man sent to Germany in the 1930s to study medicine and dentistry and his growing relationship with the woman who would become his wife, Helga Gerda Caro, a young Jewish German.

Media Reviews

"[A] wide-ranging, unpredictable and moving account....This lovely book, 'memoir as well as biography,' examines great and fearful events seen through extraordinary lives. In clear and elegant writing, Seth explores the macrocosm through the microcosm, resulting in a most unusual, worthwhile book." (starred review)

Synopses

Shanti Behari Seth, brought up in India, was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin--though he could not speak a word of German--to study medicine and dentistry. Helga Gerda Caro, known to everyone as "Henny" was also born in 1908, in Berlin, to a Jewish family--cultured, patriotic, and intensely German. When the family decided to take Shanti as a lodger, Henny's first reaction was, "Don't take the black man!" But a friendship flowered, and when Henny fled Germany just one month before war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person in the country she knew: Shanti. Vikram Seth has woven together their story, which recounts the arrival into this childless couple's lives of their great-nephew from India--the teenage Vikram. The result is a tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, postwar Germany and 1970s Britain.--From publisher description.

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