Product Description

TWO LIVES tells the remarkable story of Seth's great uncle and aunt. His great uncle Shanti left India for medical school in Berlin in the 1930s and lodged with a German Jewish family. In the household was a daughter, Henny, who urged her mother 'not to take the blackie'. But a friendship developed and each managed to leave Germany and found their way to Britain as the Nazis rose to power. Shanti joined the army and lost his right arm at the battle of Monte Cassino, while Henny (whose family were to die in the camps) made a life for herself in her adopted country. After the war they married and lived the emigre life in north London where Shanti, despite the loss of his arm, became a much-loved dentist. During his own adolescence in England, Vikram Seth lived with Shanti and Henny and came to know and love them deeply. His is the third life in this story of TWO LIVES. This is also a book about history, encompassing as it does many of the most significant themes and events in the 20th century, whose currents are reflected in the lives of Shanti, Henny and their family: from the Raj and the Indian freedom movement to the Third Reich, the Holocaust and British postwar society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27035 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review
'Truly unforgettable... moving and illuminating' THE TIMES ** 'Two Lives has about it a purity of intent and a goodness of heart that are rare in modern literature...no one could read this book without feeling moved by these two human beings, and their str

Irish Times
'[A] Persian carpet of a biography ... pleasurable and
astonishing'

Hilary Mantel, Sunday Telegraph
‘Seth’s prose…is assured and never sentimental, gently quizzical, its surface sufficiently permeable to let true feeling through’

Customer Reviews

stunning inspirational work from A SUITABLE BOY author
This is an extraordinary memoir of the lives of two quite ordinary people: Vikram Seth's great aunt Henny,a German Jewess, and great uncle Shanti, an Indian Hindi. I loved A Suitable Boy so it was wonderful to read the story of this great author's upbringing and inspiration. Henny is trying to find out what happened to her family during the war - Seth uses all her long-forgotten letters to document this unbearably poignant tale. Two Lives is a really fantastic book: somehow it manages to entwine strands of India, Third Reich and Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, post-war Germany and 1970s Britain. Yet, despite such a complex and rich background, the two main characters come vividly to life, particuarly because their letters and direct quotations are used liberally throughout. This way, we become intimately involved in them and their lives. I can't criticise this book - I thought it was absolutely incredible and so well told. I'd recommend it every time.

Fabulous
Vikram Seth turns the narrative skills so evident in "A Suitable Boy" on his own family, and the result is this compelling and engaging biography. His Indian great-uncle and German Jewish great-aunt lived through a turbulent period in the history of Europe and the world, and Seth manages to make the large-scale elements - such as the battle of Monte Cassino, the fate of the Jews in Berlin and the wider Reich - and the personal details of Shanti and Henny's own stories - his career as a dentist, her correspondence with her German friends, their marriage - equally vivid. The stories are not sentimentalised, either - while Seth's great affection for Shanti and Henny is obvious, he presents the reader with a remarkably clear-eyed view of their flaws and failings as well. The whole thing presents a fresh look at a much-chronicled era.

wide ranging and moving
What a tour de force! I really enjoyed this mix of biography, family history and world history brought together in a beatifully told narrative. It seems particularly pertinent today as it describes the complex relationships between religions as well as family happiness and conflict. Jews, Hindus and Christians live and work together, experience love and betrayal, including the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. I have recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and the description of the final days of Lola's life was almost unbearable in its detail and feeling. I also enjoyed getting to know the characters and finding out more and more detail, good and bad, as the book went on. Very real because it is so complex, very respectful but also true. Politically astute and relevant, I highly recommend it.