‘I have so carefully mapped the corners of my mind
That I am forever waking in a lost country…’
Summer Requiem traces the immutable shifting of the seasons, the relentless rhythms of a great world that both ‘gifts and harms’. Luminous, resonant and profound, these poems trace the dying days of summer, ‘the hour of rust’, when memory is haunted by loss and decay. But in the silence that follows, as the soul is cast adrift, there is also reconciliation with the transience of all things; the knowledge that there is a place, ‘changeable, that will not betray’.
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 published several 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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